


we're (not) forever

by enemeriad



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, So much angst, like avenge bros meets college, literally everyone is in this, young avengers meets avengers meets college
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2018-02-23 05:19:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2535623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemeriad/pseuds/enemeriad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'We don't have to be friends,' he offers, 'Just, like, casual.'</p><p>'Casual,' she repeats, unconvinced.</p><p>‘Sure, cos that leaves it open.’</p><p>Darcy half-laughs because she's scared to fracture the nervous anticipation on his face, ‘open to what?’</p><p>'Dating.'</p><p>Darcy gapes at him, at the unexpected turn. 'P-pardon?'</p><p>Barnes shrugs, and he tries not to fidget but she sees. 'I like you.'</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Or, the one where student politics take on a life of their own while Darcy's trying very hard not to fall for her ex-boyfriend's best friend or have another panic attack.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <b>Modern College | Alternate Universe</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. do you think clint would notice if i stole a twinkie?

'How long do you think we're stuck here?'

'Knowing Clint? - oh, I'm, yeah, sorry, the mental image,' James mumbles, after a beat.

'Dude, come on. Knowing Tash, she won't _let_ him out of there until morning.'

His hands slink into his pockets and he slides down the wall he'd been leaning on. 'Y'know, we could like-,' he inclines his head towards the door, '-bust in and-'

Darcy just laughs. 'Do you want to die?'

 

 

There is something jarringly fluid about him, compared to the lumbering stockiness of her other friends, she wants to ask about the possibility of a burgeoning career in dance because she would laugh, but in this space it feels a little too accusatory and what if it fell flat?

'D'you think Clint would notice if I stole a Twinkie?'

And why does Clint have Twinkie's hidden behind his pyjamas is anyone's guess but Darcy doesn't even care how old they are, just says, 'oh god, no, give me one.'

She hears him fumble around and then after a satisfying cr _unch,_ he opens the packet and hands her one. After a moment he spends carefully peeling the wrapper, he looks up at her apologetically and says, 'how'd you get - ' gestures to the door, 'bad luck or somethin'?'

Darcy does wonder if the dark is enabling him because she's never heard him say more than five sentences in their entire tangential 'friend-of-a-friend-I-once-fucked' acquaintanceship. But what really gets her to bristle is the insinuation that Tash is somehow in the wrong for this whole scenario. Like Barton hadn't been the one to booby-trap them into into his closet. Whatever, her friendship with Nat trumps seeming cool and unaffected to the boy she's had a crush on for a good portion of the fall semester.

'My room was empty after Jane moved to Thor's, so, like, she took the other bunk when she transferred with you guys. Other than her preternatural libido, she's actually a pretty good roommate.'

He grins, white slice of enamel in the shadows and digs around in the box again, fishing another Twinkie out and offering it to her.

'Nah, I'm trying to-,' and she stops short as a series of breathy sighs echo through the room, 'ugh, fuck, gross, that's not even real.'

'You'd be surprised. Clint's a real screamer.'

Darcy huffs and then takes the proffered Twinkie and a seat next to him on the floor. 'This is some Catch-22 shit, right here.'

'How'd you figure?'

'This wouldn't have happened if Tony hadn't taken the whole Pepper thing so badly.'

He laughs, bringing up a hand to brush off the smattering of crumbs on his lap. 'I think on the scale of freak-outs, he's still levellin' under Bruce,' he says, reasonably.

Darcy snorts. 'There's a yardstick. I just thought it was so stupid and now he wants us to choose, like that's even a choice.'

'I don't think he thought that through,' Bucky supplies through a mouthful, 'not that anyone is actually gonna care either way.'

'I get that he's, like, I don't know, pissed or emasculated or some shit, but I don't see it as some epic betrayal.'

He shrugs. 'Melodrama's Stark's middle name, he gotta be the centre of attention or it ain't a day well spent.'

Darcy clicks unhelpfully, dislodging cake from her teeth and leans back against Clint's sock drawer, taking another bite as a series of stuttered cries come from outside.

She makes a face, 'ew.'

'Mmh.'

'It would be Pepper, though, right?' she asks after a beat, wanting to gauge him. 'You'd side with Pepper?'

James shrugs, 'don't think it really matters, y'know, cos it's bigger than just Pep or Stark. They got like their own issues spillin' over to all of us.'

Darcy glances over at him, feels the words sting, too, because this is their final year together. And it had already started to feel like the end, what with Jane moving off-campus to live with Thor and Steve starting to talk placement and Clint mentioning something about military. The gang was thinking future and not in a wholesome, cohesive way, but without all the collective pronouns Darcy had thought their final year would include. Somehow the idealism of shared apartments on the lower east side and a coffee shop or food truck or clinic or whatever the fuck had been their cause of the month had started to develop a laugh-track in conversation. Like it was impossible or stupid or silly when all Darcy could think was,  _why not?_

'Yeah,' she mumbles, licking her finger, 'or, like, it could be the end of them.'

He sits up a bit now and looks genuinely interested in that comment, a change from the disinterested attitude he gives off in truck loads. He tucks his hair behind his ear and it's longer than she'd thought. But she'd always seen him from afar, across the field when he'd wave Steve over or across the room of a party at Tony's in a slightly tipsy, lust-deluded haze. She'd always thought he was bigger, taller, definitely more built. But up close, he's a lot more graceful, wiry, almost languid. Except, Twinkie in mouth, he's just  _almost_ twenty-one with a place on the football team and he squints a bit when he smiles. And sure, there's better places to be on the designated night for laundry and hair washing but its  _James._

 _'_ D'ya think Tony's that ballsy? Pep would kill him and then Nat would find a way to revive him just to kill him again,' he says, a little worried.

'I'd kick his ass, too,' Darcy intones, 'but for more than just the Pep thing. For Bruce, too.'

James sighs and Darcy kind of loves Clint, despite his loquacious and voyeuristic sexual habits, for doing this to her. 

'Don't think he, -well, anyway, I think Steve managed to sort it,' James says, pushing his hair back and Darcy can't even _help_ how quickly her brain goes from sad to thinking about sex because she licks her lips and,  _damn._

'Uh, yeah, but Tony's just an asshole, didn't even say _thank you._ Bruce is supposed to be his best friend, it's a mess.'

She notices he purses his lips and sits back a bit, 'well, sure,' he starts, 'but this _whole_ thing would've been avoided if she'd just been honest with him.'

Darcy's jaw drops, 'dude. Seriously. She's running against him for Class President, it's not a crime against humanity.'

But James just leans back awkwardly. 'You're not seein' the problem?'

And frick, if Darcy wasn't so attracted to him she would've just rolled her eyes into the next millennium. This was so typical of him to blame  _Pepper_ like it was her fault she had to tread around Tony's ego like he was a small child. 

'There is no problem! Tony just knows he's going to lose to Pepper and he chucked a tantrum to the school board which only resulted in a whole bunch of stupid domino effects with Bruce's thesis getting screwed over and us getting locked in Clint's closet!' 

He raises an eyebrow. 'No need to get your panties in a-'

And jesus fucking christ, at that point, Darcy's pretty sure the rosy tint to his person suddenly disappeared because no, just  _no._

'Oh  _my_ god. Dude, just concede that Tony's over-reaction started all this mess.'

He shrugs, 'Does it matter? They just need'a sort their business out before we have to start pickin' and choosin' who to invite to shit.'

Darcy makes a face. 'Wow, social politics when your friends are about to break up, Bruce is going through hypomania and that asshole-' she gestures angrily, '-decides to lock us in his fucking wardrobe because-' and then she blinks. 

_Oh shit._

_'_ You were the one that stole her posters, weren't you?'

She doesn't even let him respond before she twists and resoundingly slaps him. 

'Hey, fuck!'

'No, fuck you Barnes, that's some fucking fucked up shit. I don't care if Tony's your mate or that Barton probably suggested it to you, that's just being an asshole. She's your friend too.'

'Lewis, that's not what-'

'Spare me. I think I got it. Jesus. What did you do to them? Don't tell me that you stuffed them up. I have modge-podge and glitter running through my veins at this point for those bloody posters.'

He just crosses his arms over his chest and makes a face at her like  _she's_ the one that is on a mission to destroy a student council campaign because their friend is an asshole. 

'They're behind the shelves. Why'd'ya think Barton tripped the place?'

Darcy scowls, flicking an errant shirt sleeve away from her face. 'Because he's an asshole. Because you're an asshole. Because you're all assholes. I'm stuck in a closet with a bunch of a-holes and seventy-five bejewelled posters of Pep's face. Great.'

'Well darlin', this ain't no peach for me either. You're gratin' with the girl-power schtick.'

 _Fucking loser._ She couldn't help but grimace even as her heart kind of sunk. A crush was a crush it wasn't like she was in love with him, it was just kind of shit when your illusions of someone and impressions of them through the various here-say she'd heard since he'd transferred with Nat and Clint, both of them army brats, all of them childhood friends of Steve and yet, well,  _shit,_ she'd been so wrong.

'Good one.'

'My genuine pleasure, sweetheart.' 

Darcy  _barely_ resisted growling at him. 'I can't believe I thought you were in here because  _you_ were looking for them as well.'

James just rolls his eyes, 'I- jeez _,_ you're not even listenin', but continue talkin' since you like your own voice so much.'

Darcy spluttered. 'Oh fuck you, Barnes. Does Nat know Clint is distracting her with sex?'

'I'm not the psychic. How am I supposed to know? Probably. She knows everythin' about anythin'.'

'You definitely turn into much more of an asshole when you're called out on your shit, you know that Barnes?' Natasha says from where she materialises. 

Darcy doesn't hesitate to give Barnes a churlish grin because yes, clearly he was defensive there but, still, thank god for Natasha's excellent timing or she would've probably slapped him again, harder, or, or, something.

Nat drops the padlock to Barnes and winks, 'tell Tony it still didn't stop me.'

 _'_ Did you _know_ we were in here?' she asks Nat, as the redhead helps her scramble to her feet, 'cos like, I love you, but please don't prioritise sex over my innocence ever again.'

Nat rolls her eyes. 'I'm not omnipotent, ok, I just exude that kind of vibe. I didn't know you were in here. As soon as I was finished, I could hear you two arguing so, I figured I'd let you out of your misery.'

Darcy just groans. 'So you did priorities sex over my innocence!'

Quiet for this whole interaction, Barnes crawls up and out and huffs. 'Quit it, Lewis, _your_ mind's dirtier than a gutter.'

'What's that supposed to mean?!'

'Enough,' Nat mutters and then when that does nothing to quieten their imminent bickering, she punches Barnes in the shoulder, 'stop being such an asshole, get the posters.'

'Christ, between the two'a you I'll be black an' blue.'

Nat just rolls her eyes again and that's when Darcy realises who she's picked it up from. She smirks a little, watching Barnes crane awkwardly behind Clint's wardrobe and retrieve the multi-coloured cardboard.

'It smells like shit in here,' James says.

'You are an asshole,' Darcy says, bitterly, 'aw, they're all crumpled and shit.'

Barnes throws her a dirty look as he puts them down. 'I didn't do it! I was tryin'a-' he falters at her scowl and puts up his hands in mock mercy. 

'God, don't even-, cya round ladies,' he mutters and pushes past Darcy to get out. 

Darcy turns to Nat, 'Don't think I don't hate you. But I hate you like 55% because it's mostly Clint's fault but I still realised that Barnes wasn't actually really hot, I mean, he is, but his being an asshole significantly decreases my interest in sleeping with him.'

Nat gives her a sympathetic grimace. 'I told you this a month ago.'

'Yeah, but I kinda thought you were just being you. I mean, your judgement is severely impaired. You share bodily fluids with Clint.'

Nat scoffs and starts to gather Pepper's posters, 'next time I'll leave you in the closet a little longer.'

'Jerk.'

She just grins, sprinkling a little glitter over Darcy's head. 

 

 

 

 Any excuse for sundaes and gossip is Darcy's jam, which finds her seated at the nice table in the courtyard behind the cafeteria, trying to console Pepper with the rest of the gang. Pepper, much to Darcy's disappointment, takes a the whole thing with a lot of grace. Outwardly, at least. But, whatever, Darcy'd still trash-talk Tony or the entire male gender for less.

'Eh, I don't give a flip. He can do whatever the fudge he wants.'

Kamala nudges Darcy and eyes her. 'Give her the sundae, she needs it more than you.'

It's dire times indeed if Pep's started to result to cussing so Darcy pushes the cone-in-a-cup over to Pepper. Nat perches herself on the seat, legs astride and eyes Pep. 

'C'mon, he's a loser. He'll come around. He's in love with you, so, like, he'll get over himself.' 

Darcy's eyes flicker dubiously to Nat because Tony? Get over himself? Yeah. No. But then she says, 'and if not, you'll win President and be princess of the campus. Who even needs him.'

America grins from beside Kamala, leaning forward to eye Darcy. 'What happened to if I don't get a boyfriend my vagina is going to shrivel up and die?'

Darcy scrunches up her nose at her. 'Pepper is a class above the rest. She could totally do it.'

Pepper shrugs. 'I didn't tell him because I knew he was going to react like this.'

'Um, yeah, cos he ain't going to half as good a job as you, duh,' America replies, dipping a finger into the sundae. 

Kamala nods. 'Pep, you know he's only doing this because he wants to prove Rhodey wrong.'

'I swear to god, the boys are never  _not_ doing some sort of stupid bet.'

Nat laughs, 'They have to find ways to entertain themselves with their limited intellect, America.'

'I thought the halloween one was funny,' Darcy offers.

'Anything that gets those damn cheerleaders' hair ruined-'

'Oh, Nat,' Darcy replies, 'you're just mad because Clint kissed Kate.'

'It was a dare!' Kamala says, laughing. 

'Nat's just pissed because she wanted to exclusively eye-fuck Clint for the rest of eternity without having the balls to do anything about it, so.'

America and Kamala laugh.

'You still haven't worked through that?' Pep asks, surprised at the bitter tone and tries to hide a smile. 

'Oh that's rich!,' Nat says, archly. 'I seem to recall you and America having a fight over who was going to ask who out on a date, ok, so like,  _please._ '

That shuts the two up, but Kamala pokes her tongue out and kisses America. 'Whatever, at least we're not still bitter.'

Pepper nudges Nat and hands her a staple gun. 'Come on, let's be bitter together.'

 

 

 

'I'm  _Pakistani,_ ' Kamala says and then quirks her eyebrow, 'you know this.'

Steve sighs, 'Bobbi, sit down, this-'

'No, Steve, stop taking Tony's side! This is so stupid!' she says and then squares her gaze on Tony, 'and as for you-'

'It's literally been a week,' Nat interjects, 'it's starting to actually piss me off.'

Bobbi nods, like the fact that Nat is slightly irritated is proof of everything. 'Exactly.'

Clint wisely pulls Steve back as Tony groans. 'I'm trying to help you!'

'By making me the public laughing stock!' Kamala says.

'What?' Tony intones, 'how exactly!'

Nat tsks, 'you're an idiot.'

'It doesn't actually  _matter_ Tony, I don't want to be involved. Okay? I'm  _muslim._ I My dad gets stopped at the foyer  _every single time_ he comes to see me. That's not some sort of joke, okay? People ignore my mum when she's at the mall. I'm not going to become some sort of-'

'Kamala, I don't think he-'

'Oh will you shut up, Steve!' Kamala yells and very quickly it becomes apparent that she's close to tears, 'I'm just  _sick_ of, ugh- _'_

Steve frowns. 'Tony, you should like-'

Nat looks thoroughly disgruntled and Bobbi kicks him. Kamala just shakes her head. 'I said  _no_ ,' she says quietly, 'for real, no.'

She leaves real quick, stumbling over Clint's legs and disappearing out of the committee room as Bobbi gets out her phone. 

'We need to figure something out,' Steve starts. 

'Actually,' Clint says, getting to his feet, 'I think it's pretty easy, cos, the way I see it, Tony just has to stop being such a competitive asshole and this whole thing will be solved.'

'And let Pepper  _win?'_

'She's going to win anyway, Tony,' Bobbi tells him, not without significant pleasure, 'like, big time.'

'Thanks Morse. Always appreciate your pep talks.'

She grins and puts the phone up to her ear.

'To be fair, Tony, your campaign plans have been kind of shit.'

Clint shrugs, 'not even cos I'm sleeping with her, but like, Nat has a point.'

'Tony, you know we already  _have_ a society for minorities?  _And_ a society for LGBT people,' Bobbi asks, hands on her hips and its jarring to see her so self-righteous in her baby blue cheerleading uniform. But hey, wow, fuck stereotypes. _  
_

'So she got upset because we're giving her _too_ much representation?'

And with a collective groan from the women in the room, Tony has the decency to flush.  _A little._

'Ok, ok, so perhaps putting her on a poster and calling her the new Malala was a bit-'

'A bit dumb,' Nat interjects cooly, 'a lot racist.'

'-but, yeah, wait,  _how,_ they're both Pakistani!'

'Kamala was born in New Jersey, Tony! They're not interchangeable!' 

And if anything ever makes Tony bashful, it's Pepper walking into a room looking furious. 

'You saw the posters then.'

Pepper scoffs and slams down the art. 'Saw the posters! _You,_ after what you did to Bruce, and now Kamala? Ugh!'

Nat has the wherewithal to start edging Bobbi and Clint from the room and stops at the door with a frown.

'Steve. Let's go.'

Steve glances awkwardly from Tony to Pep before she glares at him. 

'Alone, Steve, I want to talk to Tony,  _alone._ '

''kay, gotcha. Leaving now.'

 

 

Outside, Bobbi mouths, 'thank you,' to Darcy who just shrugs as Clint, Nat and Steve disappear down the corridor. 

'I figured if we didn't call her, she'd just stew on it for like a month. Maybe this way she can-'

'The mood was perfect for her to blow her stack,' Darcy says, with buckets of glee, checking the glass pane into the room where she'd been watching the entire show.

'-get it all out,' Bobbi finishes, nodding. 

'You know the rule about committee members _only_ in the committee room is stupid and exclusionary and defeats the purpose of it being a  _student_ representative body?'

Bobbi just laughs and glances through the door, 'like you've ever paid that rule any attention. You just didn't want to go in because you wanted to keep an eye out for-'

'Don't say it!' Darcy interrupts, her eyes wide.

'-Barnes,' Bobbi says, smiling something awful, 'so you could accost him in the corridor and yell at him for being a jerk.'

Darcy sighs. Damn. She's like transparent or something. 

'Tasha told you then.'

'Obviously.'

Darcy huffs. 'I'm just upset that my made-up pedestal was totally wrong.'

Bobbi shrugs, 'that's like the story of my life.'

'Yeah.. I still think it would make me feel way better. You know, now, retrospectively, I could've said some  _kickass_ rebuttals. Like really knock him down a peg or two.'

Bobbi laughs. 'Ok, I'm sick of talking about your imagined problems. Some of us have sports committee tonight and I need like pity carbs or whatever.'

Darcy pulls a face. 'Thanks  _Barbara.'_

'Um, that's President Barbara of the Elite Athlete's Society, to you, mere minion of mine.'

 

 

 

 

'No,' Darcy intones, as she shoves Clint so she can squish in between him and Steve, 'Bobbi ditched me for her meeting.'

'Darcy, they're compulsory?' Steve says, and eyes her.  

Darcy clicks her teeth, 'pff, Jessica-'

'What, Drew?'

'Yeah Clint, the one and only, she came past and was like, can we debrief beforehand and kidnapped Bobbi, so, now I'm stuck with you lot. Bloody cheerleaders.'

'Is there a sport that Bobbi doesn't play?' Steve asks. 

'She's shit at golf,' Clint supplies, with  _all_ the bitterness.

'I think pegging the sticks at your head actually makes her  _excellent_ at golf,' Darcy says.

'Hey, we've given you our beer, don't be mean!'

'This, Clint, is actually piss.'

Steve smirks. 'Don't say that, this was actually left over from Thor's graduation.'

'Great, so it might be laced with roofies.'

'Oh man, Loki's not  _that_ bad, Darcy.'

Darcy just widens her eyes and takes a swig. That is not even a conversation she wants to contemplate. There are so many levels of wrong regarding Loki, she didn't even want to get started. 

'So what were you guys going to do before I came and elevated the cool in the room?'

Steve grins, 'we managed to get Bruce to agree to come and play Call of Duty.'

'We,' Clint scoffs, 'I will always veto Bruce playing COD because he's fucking good at it and I feel like shit because I'm supposed to be like, army brat or whatever.'

'He never gets, like, angry, he's like zen in the game. It's actually pretty cool to see,' Steve tells her. 

Her phone buzzes and Darcy laughs. 'I getcha, I've been playing him in two-play Flight Control and he's been kicking my ass for a year now. I keep thinking he's actually video-game Yoda, but he just says-'

'I got a knack,' Clint and Steve say, imitating Bruce's low, quiet register. 

They laugh. 

'So okay, I guess I will disingenuously say sorry for interrupting boy's night,' Darcy says, with a bright laugh. 

'Ha! Lewis, Tasha told me about you and COD so stop playing coy,' Clint mutters, getting up to grab another beer. 

She grins, 'damn straight.'

'Want one?'

'Nah,' she says, 'but if you have any of that cider left over, or, or Cheetos. Or is it only bacteria in your fridge -'

Clint rolls his eyes, sits back down opening the bottle for her before handing it to her. 

'Steve, dude, you drink slower than my Grandmother. You know it tastes  _worse_ when it's lukewarm.'

Clint laughs as Steve scoffs at her. 'I like to enjoy it, ok, it's not some sorta competition. Unlike me thrashing Clint, cos, that title I will happily take.'

Keep dreaming, big guy.'

Darcy coughs through her swallow as Clint starts to whine, 'Steve, you always press play before I'm ready!'

'Who's the Grandma now,' he replies as Darcy's eyes widen at her phone's backlit screen.

Tony Stark

-  _It's off_

Darcy sucks a breath in through her teeth and grabs Steve's shirt. 

'Steve, steve, jesus, Steve! Stop, look at this.'

He frowns, pausing the game, and cutting off Clint's whoop of joy at de facto winning and obliges. 

'Wh-, shit,  _shit,'_ Clint hisses and jumps to his feet. 

Darcy looks up at him as he starts dialling and disappears out of the room with a subdued, 'dude, we fucked up-'

Speaking of which.. 'oh god, Tony's going to be a wreck.'

And for all her posturing, all her shit, Tony is kind of one of her favourite people by proxy of being one of Pepper's favourite people. So. In kind. One of her favourites. Which makes it all the more sucky. Darcy's first thought is that her mental guest list for her 21st kind of got cut in half as Steve makes a sad, huffy sound.

'Pepper too,' he mumbles, not unkindly. 

'You take Pep, she'll want to cry and neither me or Nat do that kinda shit too well, and I'll get Tony.'

Steve blinks. 'You sure?'

Darcy shrugs, she does empathy in the form of snarkiness well enough to pass for Tony. 'Bobbi's at committee and Kamala and America are that-'

'Oh, the thesis proposal!' 

'Yup, so, we gotta handle this.'

'Okay, are you.. you sure I should take Pep?'

'Yeah, maybe avoid saying things that make it seem like anything was her fault. That's the last thing people wanna hear when they break up.'

Steve gives her a sharp look and she stops, then frowns at him, 'Steve, I'm fine, and I didn't care. Like it hurt, sure, but like, I'm fine.'

'Darcy, I know you said, but-, I'm really sorry.'

And that's a little much for this moment. It's a little much to start thinking of Darcy _and_ Steve and the dynamics of that particular mess. But Steve is still looking at her pained and sad and she just, she just  _can't._  

'Oh god, Steve, I know, look, believe me, I know, but it's all good.'

He shifts next to her uncomfortably and then pulls her to her feet. 'For what its worth, all that stuff I said was not what I meant.'

Darcy shrugs, 'no, but it's what you thought.'

 

 

 

Darcy actually realises halfway there that she should bring backup because consolation is kind of really not her thing. She is apt at hovering, supporting healthy eating patterns for Jane while she'd been doing her phD and like, general friend duties. Candy and ice-cream post breakup. But not usually at the epicentre. Bobbi is kind of the go-to queen of post-breakup pep talks. They are her jam. But Darcy just flounders awkwardly between angry dissing of said-ex and empty silences where she offers up more chunky monkey. 

But of course, none of their extended friends are picking up their phones. Even the less useful.

'Clint! You can't just disappear like this. In a crisis. C'mon. Dude. Call me back. I'm only going to leave 3 more of these okay, because I think ten is a nice round number-ugh, just, just call me back. Asshole.'

She clambers up the stairs of the dorms after hauling ass over to the other side of campus because Tony lives in the bloody schticks, because, well, he's loaded and he likes the "ambience" of the private dorms. 

'Tony!' she yells, and stifles a yawn. 

She hops up and down because if she's caught in his dorm, again, by that asshole monitor, she's going to get a warning whatever the fuck that is, and this close to graduation she kind of doesn't want to find out. 

'Tony!' she whispers, and wraps her knuckles on the door.

'C'mon dude, I'll hug you and stuff. We'll drink lots and it'll feel a lot less shit in the-, ooooop!' she squeaks as the door wrenches open.

'Lewis?!' Barnes says in surprise and then swings the door open all the way, 'what are you doing here?'

'Me?! What are you doing here? You don't live here.' Darcy peers behind him, wondering how its possible that Barnes was able to get here before her. She ran! Okay, so she half-whimpered, half-jogged but the sentiment of urgency counted for something.

'Uh, no, I don't but I asked you first, so-' he gestures for her to go on. 

Darcy blinks, taking in the sight of him, half-dressed in only camo pants and looking like he just worked out. 'Wh-..' because _damn_ but still he's a jerk, so, 'okay, I'm here for Tony.'

Barnes' eyes widen. ' _You_ and  _Tony?_ '

'Yeah?'

'Pep and him goin' through a rough patch and you're tryin'a seduce him?'

'What?!  _No!'_

He snorts. 'I'm just fuckin' with you. What did you want with Tony?'

Darcy frowns, 'you're such an asshole,' because no one should look that good while acting like a smug dick, 'I'm here to get him drunk, make him forget he fucked up with Pep.'

'But,' James starts and frowns, turning around and then back to her, 'wait, a second,' he says and then shuts the door on her. 

'Hey!' Darcy yells and then strangles her voice when she remembers about the hall monitor. The fuck?

She's got her arms crossed, irritated. She pulls out her phone and gives Bobbi another call but her voicemail reminds her tolerantly and evenly that Bobbi is currently unavailable and she'll call you back when she has the time,  _thank you very much._

It's been such a weird couple of days, what with getting locked in a closet and then Barnes turning out to be such a jerk that she would have to find someone else to have sex dreams about because while he was  _hot_ her brain hurt to have conversations with him when they were so tinged with misogyny and Kamala crying and Pep and Tony splitting up. It was _a lot_. 

And then Barnes opens the door again and pulls her in, unceremoniously, telling her to be quiet  _or else_ and Darcy gets the distinct impression shit is only _just_ about to go down _._

 


	2. and you're tryin'a seduce him?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Committee meetings mess with consolatory visits and Darcy isn't a self-implicating adulteress.

She shrugs James' vice like grip on her arms off and glares at him. 'Oi, dude, you don't have to man-handle. Something great happened during evolution, we call it words.'

Barnes rolls his eyes and nudges her toward the light emanating from Tony's living room. 'Everything about me bothers you.'

Not everything, but sure, whatever, she could let him simmer on that. She starts to walk further into living room, peeking around the corner to discover none other than Clint Barton sitting in front of Tony's expensive and scary computer thing. 

'Clint? The hell are you doing here? Where did you go? Did you take your aids out because dude, I've called you like seventy times.'

Clint waves her off and points to the computer in front of him. 

'Whatever, sorry, who cares. Just come here.'

She gets pushed into a seat by Barnes, who perches himself on the arm and points. 'Look!'

Her eyes follow his point and she scans the listing of their school newspaper. 

'Wow.. he pulled out. I didn't think he'd actually just let it go.'

And Darcy can't feel a teeny weeny bit sad because she had a really good pep talk she'd thought through in her head using a lot of the phrases Bobbi used and now it would have to wait until Clint inevitably fucked up and she'd have to augment it for Nat.

'Well..' Barnes starts.

'Let's just say, we-' Clint says, gesturing between the two of them, 'had a lot to do with it.'

'You two?' Darcy exclaims, 'shit, I'm fucking impressed.'

James laughs. 'Don't jump the gun. We just got Rhodey drunk and made him rescind the deal.'

Oh!

'I thought it would be a better story. I mean.. you're wearing camo. Yeah. Actually. Why the camo?'

Clint laughs. 'Well I told you we fucked up, right.'

'Cool your jets. We made a tiny, understandable mistake based on..'

'Extrapolation,' Clint finishes with his word of the week.

Darcy glances at both of them. 'Oh my god, yes, and-!'

'We tried to fix what we fucked up originally,' Clint says as James makes a disgusted sound. 

'Fuck off, Clint, you're the one that stole the bloody posters!'

Darcy rounds on him. 'Clint! You asshole! What for!'

Clint glares at James. 'Thanks dude. It's not what it seems like Darcy! Jeez, I wouldn't do that to Pep, ok! Just, just listen, ok?'

Darcy huffs and Barnes sniggers. 'Come on, you tell it, then, maybe it'll get me off the hook with Lewis, too.'

She rolls her eyes. 'I've nailed you there. You gotta save a baby labrador for me to even consider reconsidering.'

Clint makes a face. 'Anyway, Tony had said he wanted to steal the posters as like, vengeance for Pepper not telling him he was running, and I knew that was only the beginning of a lot of shit, ok? Anyway, Bishop was trying to reason with him but the fucking moron, I mean if Kate is telling you its a bad idea, it's a fucking bad idea. But he was really pissed and so he was like distracting the hall monitor to get past-'

'That was damn funny,' Barnes says, interrupting before Darcy hits him and hisses, shhhhhh, he grins but quietens. 

'Yeah, Maria knew what was up, so like, he goes to me, Clint please steal them for me, and hands me his padlock or whatever that he's invented cos no one can get into it or-, I don't know, anyway, I knew it was a bad idea because Tony would probably let Wade draw dicks on them or something and then, like, that would be, -I like Pepper around, ok? Sue me. She's the best girlfriend Tony's had so I agreed and I put them in my room.'

'And decided to booby-trap the closet?!'

'Nah, shit, I didn't know Tony's padlock like auto-activated or some shit. I don't even know how that happened. But I guess it was of the trap and hold variety. Which is fucking stupid when you think about it - the thief gets in with the posters and then what? Sits around and cuddles them. Idiot. Anyway, I-'

'Hold up,' Darcy starts, 'Tony stole them, you saved them and then accidentally booby-trapped your own wardrobe?'

'Yeah, if I'd known, I would've left you guys in there for fuckin' ever until you finally hooked up.'

Darcy scoffs. 'Please, me and him, that ain't happening.'

Barnes wisely stays quiet as Clint guffaws. 'Sure, Lewis, you don't wanna tap that.'

'Dude!' James exclaims. 'Shut the fuck up!'

Darcy mimes vomiting despite the fact that her face goes through a veritable pantone wheel of crimson shades.

'Ugh, but-, wait, what were you doing in there then?' Darcy says, thinking back to finding Barnes on the floor of the wardrobe saying 'don't shut the-' as she shut the door and then realised that they couldn't get out.

James huffs. 'I wasn't stealin' 'em or stuffin' 'em up like you'd thought. I was tryin'a get them back before Pep noticed cos I thought this asshole had gone dark on me and decided to partake in Tony's stupidity.'

Darcy can't help but feel a little vindicated like yes! I knew you weren't 100% an asshole. But still, she has standards. 

'Oh,' she says, 'that was nice.'

James just grunts. 

'How did you find out they were with me?' Clint asks

Darcy looks apologetic. 'You were voted most likely to be Tony's accomplice. Guilty by association.'

'Oh jeez, did Nat-, she did, didn't she? She probably-, damn. Damn.'

Darcy half shrugs. 'Sorry dude. But you did the right thing and I will happily admit that I was wrong. Just this once, cos, like 99% of the time I'm right.'

'So you weren't trying to distract Tasha then?'

'What, when?'

'When we were stuck in your wardrobe,' Darcy supplies, cos like that shit needed an explanation. 

'Oh, ha! No. I had just joked that if Pep and Tony split cos of this we'd have to pick sides and Nat got really mad and made me apologise.'

'Sexually,' James states. 

'God, you two are fucking weird,' Darcy mutters.

Clint just grins. 

'I've just got to say, like again, because really, you guys did a pretty good job today.'

Clint rubs the back of his neck awkwardly and sits back against the lounge. 'Shit, well, that still leaves Khan.'

'Wait, before we figure out how to make Tony apologise for like, everything, can you please explain to me why you're both half-naked and in camo?'


	3. fire cannot kill a dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies are made (and a lot of them too,) Darcy makes a discovery and Tony throws a classic party complete with hangovers.

Oh and its such a disappointing story. But its such a good visual that Darcy doesn't even care. 

'So you returned them to her?'

'Yeah,' Barnes says, proudly. 

'Right.'

They high-five each other, the two morons. 

'So, considering she noticed they were gone before you returned them, why did you two idiots think camo was necessary?'

That leaves them stumped. 

'Well-'

'-Rhodey, like-'

'-camo is always useful-'

'Yeah, like, like, night vision goggles.'

'-and gadgets.'

'- for adventure-'

'- and coolness-'

'Basically you just wanted to break into Tony's toy box,' she cuts in and they both nod. Without any apology.  

'I feel like you missed a great opportunity for paintball,' she says and well shit, if the two of them don't take to that idea like ducks to water. 

 

 

 

 

 

Kamala's dog is huge. Like. Well. Lockjaw is currently sitting on the steep of her dorm, growling at the lacrosse team that is currently stumbling back to their dorm rooms dripping in some bizarre sort of paint-like sludge that could've been their hazing initiation or just James and Clint having fun. 

Bobbi appears from the doorway and sits down on the steps next to Lockjaw, leaning her head on his. 'I shouldn't have gone in there.'

'What?' Darcy says, 'girl, you're our only hope! Otherwise Kamala is going to spiral into a self-loathing depression and I for one am a shit human and not equipped to deal with that.'

Bobbi grins and gives Lockjaw a good scratch. 'You'll be right, Darcy, I just shouldn't have gone up there because I think America is doing a really good job of keeping Kam from that, uh, spiral of self-loathing.'

Darcy smirks. 'Those two are fris-kay. What is this, second date?'

Bobbi groans. 'Those two have gone on like fifty dates in their imaginations, what difference does it make. I'm so glad their eye-sex is over.'

She takes a seat on the other side of the dog and sighs, 'sucks about-, hey Nat!'

Natasha comes up the path, 'hey Darcy,' and then highfives Bobbi. 'Mission accomplished.'

Bobbi laughs, sitting back. 'No way, how did you do it?'

Nat just shrugs. 'Got them green eyes and-,' she rolls her eyes as they both giggle, 'pff, no, I didn't seduce him, I just reasoned with him and he agreed that it was a mistake and that Tony was a little shit and now Bruce has a 8 week extension provided he hands in his doctor's certificate.'

'Holy shit!'

'You fixed the Bruce thing?'

'Uh huh, Lewis. And I am here to invite both of you to Tony's weird apology party or whatever. There's free beer and it's not the worst thing I've tasted so, I thought I'd let you know. Tony was supposed to text you all but he's currently apologising properly to Pepper so, it's missing its guest of honour which kind of increases its appeal if you ask me.'

Darcy laughs. 'Sweet. Wait, should we invite,' and she inclines her head towards the dorm. 

Bobbi laughs. 'I don't want to be responsible for America losing her shit. She's been waiting for this moment for like, two years.'

 

 

 

 

She makes a beeline for Bruce and pulls him into a hug, 'congratulations!' 

Bruce flushes and ducks his head. 'Yeah, looks like I'll be Dr. Banner in a couple of weeks. I can self-medicate for my bipolar.'

Darcy makes a face, 'you're going to do awesome things with your brain even though your brain doesn't always reciprocate in the most helpful way.'

He gives her a small smile and nods, 'well, yeah, I'm.. okay, now, you know, sort of. I heard you got locked in a closet with-'

'HER BAE,' Clint interjects from the kitchen, coming up to give her a cider. 'I only wish I could take credit, but alas, Tony should have at least one point for inadvertent cupid duties.'

Bruce chuckles as Darcy scowls, disgusted. 'Yeah well he can take his arrow and shove it up his, mph, because that ain't happening.'

She takes a good swig and beams, 'but hey, it all kind of worked out. I no longer have a crush on Barnes and we're all still friends. Life is great.'

'Whoah, whoa,' Clint says from behind her, 'you used to actually like James?'

Darcy shrugs, 'sure, why?'

Clint's eyes just widen and he looks like he's had an epiphany. 'Omg, I bet Nat knew, didn't she?'

'Duh.'

'FUCK!' and he promptly pivots and leaves. 

Darcy turns back to Bruce who gives her a sympathetic glance while picking only the green skittles from the bowl.

'I kind of wish I hadn't missed this one,' he says, quietly.

'Pff. Here's a run down-,' and she surmises it. After about two minutes and she's somewhere through explaining the throw down in the committee room, Bruce cuts her off. 

'Okay, okay, maybe not. That-, Tony can be a real idiot sometimes.'

'What, what, I heard my name, who's talking about me? We should always be talking about me.'

Darcy rolls her eyes and pushes past him to gives Pep lots of attention who looks all glow-y and is holding expensive flowers. 'You're such a trooper,' she tells her, 'and literally so awesome.'

Pepper grins and nods, 'true,' before kissing Bruce's cheek. 'I heard the good news.'

Tony frowns. 'I'm really-, well, you know,' but Pepper smacks his arm and he apologises properly. 

Darcy's attention turns from the scene when she hears a resounding voice say 'BARTON' and Clint make painful squeaking noises. 

'Jane!' she exclaims, literally running over to the door. Thor continues to coddle Clint as Jessica and a few other students come in, making Tony's huge living space look like a tiny matchbox. 

'Darcy!' Jane screams and then stops mid-sentence when she sees Betty. 

'Oh my god! Is anyone not here tonight?'

Darcy nods. 'Sharon low-key hates me and didn't come.'

Her friends' eyes widen and she leans on the edge of the couch. 'But why?'

'Cos, well, I think, its because I told her Steve likes her and she thinks I am coming off as ex-girlfriend/girl-he-used-to-fuck jealous or something and she is trying to figure out where I stand even though I told her it's not like that at all.'

Jane huffs. 'That's silly.'

Because in Jane land, liking people is an arbitrary measure and nobody has ever  _not_ liked Jane Foster before, are you joking?, so Darcy chucks her an indulgent smile and segue ways to, 'yeah, but, whatever, tell me, have you submitted it yet?'

And Jane blushes and takes to pulling a thread on the fabric. 'Just one more proof-'

'Are you serious? Jane! I swear to baby jesus, you are going to run over your deadline because you're debating over justifying or centering your title. It's done. Submit! Be free!'

'It's like my baby now, I- I-, just, can't. I don't know,' she bats her off and shrugs. 

Darcy pushes her cider into her hand, 'you need this more than I do.'

'Uh, nope,' Jane cautions, and pushes it back to her, 'you've got to tell me what happened because I heard from Thor who heard from Sif and, well- I just didn't think there were any actual racist smear campaigns involved.'

'Well..'

'No way!'

'Well, it wasn't a smear campaign. Tony was just trying to be helpful. In a really inappropriate way.'

'Like always.'

'Yup.'

After she's starting retelling the story for what feels like the hundredth time, she starts to feel that creeping feeling of loss. This is all she has now. Anecdotes to retell and retell and retell after everything is gone. She's going to end up at parties like this and only have 'remember when Clint' and 'god forbid Tony does that again'. And so when Bobbi comes over to chat to Jane, Darcy takes the opportunity to leave.  

 

 

 

 

She finds Nat, James and Sam on Tony's porch, spread out amongst the chairs and she offers Nat a cider and then sits. Nat's eyes don't move from the inside where Clint and Wade are currently clearing the kitchen island for make room for what will presumably some sort of complicated drinking game with all the addendums they've accumulated at this point. She lets herself feel that icky guilty feeling that rises to the surface because she wishes the porch was empty and now there is small talk to make and even though she loves these people, like  _loves,_ like  _a lot_ , she just wants to wallow and that is best done in peace. It's almost tough not the cry, but there is an warm wind and allergies? Right?

'Lewis,' Sam says, 'how come you don't visit me no more?'

'Dude, the psychology building is literally like three hundred lightyears away from political science. The company is great but god, at what cost?'

He laughs, 'how's the degree going?'

Darcy laughs because she remembers how to do this, how to act naturally, how to _be_ when she felt all but and then looks at Nat, 'hmm, Tash, how are we doing in our expensive pointless degree?'

'I'm majoring in linguistics and security studies Darcy. I am a very valuable member of society.'

James smirks, 'glad it's all finishing this year.'

'Really?' Sam says, 'I kinda don't wanna leave. Don't want to have to.. like, adult.'

Darcy shudders and takes a deep draught of the cider to calm the chill because there it is again, again, it's all coming to an end. 

'What about that coffee shop, eh, guys?' 

If she comes across bitter Nat doesn't notice, grins. 'I make a great latte.'

'Steve could do the art, I'd do maintenance,' James says, wistfully.

'Tony provide start-up, Bruce could cook and I'd bake a lot of stuff,' Sam continues. 

'The rest of the gang can just buy our overpriced free-trade vegan coffee,' Darcy says, quietly because she feels her heart clench a little at the fact that this is so totally never going to happen. 

'That'd be nice,' Barnes says and when she looks over at him, she thinks she knows that he can see her crying. 

 

 

 

 

Clint appears to let them know that Tony is doing apology speeches and Darcy finds secondhand embarrassment gives her serious anxiety so she stays, staring out at the field. Sam and Nat and James disappear inside and she props her feet up on the table. 

It's weird; muffled laughter and groans from inside and the pumping music from the kappa sigma house across the football field. The air outside is uncomfortably warm. It plasters her hair to her face and she doesn't risk the perspiration it would take to get comfortable.

'It kind of sucks, right?' Bobbi says, sitting down on the seat and hugging her one-sidedly.

It's terrible, an overwhelming bundle of warm energy beside her and Darcy nods quietly, they've had this conversation before, but, these anxieties bubble up, loosened by the vulnerability of intoxication and she finds herself speaking, 'I feel like everyone else knows what they wanna d-do and be and..and-,' and that is enough open wounds for one deep and meaningful.

Bobbi scoffs. 'Not a clue. Nobody wants to think about what'll happen when we're not all five seconds away from each other.'

Darcy starts to cry in earnest now. 'I haven't seen Sam all week and he's only 500 metres away. Oh god, B-Bobbi.'

Bobbi just tsks, 'no, Darcy, you saw him Monday at breakfast.'

'Oh y-yeah.'

'Yeah.'

Inside there's raucous laughter and she thinks she hears a lamp crack and then in his Captain voice, 'put the cleaver down, Barton'.

Darcy sighs.

'I miss him.'

'Steve?'

'Yeah, but like, I just, it's not the same Bobbi. I miss having someone that wanted me.'

She sees Bobbi's lips purse and she feels a little condemned, a little small, because it sucks, really, to kind of accept the fact that she's a little lonely, a little shitty because she wants someone like that again.

'So not Steve, but like someone in general.'

'Y-yeah.'

Bobbi sighs, 'that is like, story of my life.'

'Oh my god, Bobbi,' Darcy blubbers and she feels better, too, leans on Bobbi gratefully but she can't help it, can't resist snarking, 'if you want Lance back, just tell him.'

'He's with someone.'

Darcy, for reals, turns to look at her. 'Lance Hunter is not fucking Skye. You need to stop being so paranoid. He's in love with you.'

She's noncommittal but Darcy just huffs at her. 'You're an idiot,' she tells her because to Darcy there are no shades of grey with desire. It just is.

'So are you,' Bobbi says petulantly as she gets up, 'come back into the party?'

'In a minute.'

She lets Bobbi close the door behind her before she expels a shaky breath and turns away from the party, curling herself up into her knees. She doesn't want to feel like this. Nostalgic and shitty and sad and-

'Lewis?'

-fuck.

'Can you just, -uh, give me a minute?'

Barnes takes a seat and offers her a tissue. 

Darcy frowns as she takes it. 'Where'd you get this?'

'I carry around Kleenex in case I find a damsel in distress.'

Darcy offers him a watery grimace in return. 'I'm not a damsel.'

'But you are in distress, doll.'

'Don't call me that.'

'Got it,' he says, sitting back, 'why are you always so quick to snipe at me?'

'Because sometimes you're an asshole.'

James looks affronted. 'All your best friends are assholes. Steve is an asshole and you dated him.'

'Don't take it personally, I just don't like you.'

'Still got me nailed as a loser?'

'Yeah.'

'I don't believe that.'

'Sorry?'

James just shrugs. 'I just wanna get along. No judgement.'

Darcy makes a face, feels the dry tears crunch as she squints, 'you're the biggest agony aunt I know.'

Barnes scoffs and then lets up, 'fine, yeah, but, like, it's awkward, y'know? Especially now you an' Steve have patched it all up.'

Patched it up seems a stretch but she shrugs, 'it doesn't bug me that much.'

'We don't have to be friends,' he offers, 'Just, like, casual.'

She wipes her eyes on the back of her hand and stares at him. 'Casual,' she repeats, unconvinced.

‘Sure, cos that leaves it open.’

Darcy half-laughs because she's scared to fracture the nervous anticipation on his face, ‘open to what?’

'Dating.'

Darcy gapes at him, at the unexpected turn. 'P-pardon?'

Barnes shrugs, and he tries not to fidget but she sees. 'I like you.'

She leans forward and takes a sip of her beer. 'I'm going to need you to run that by me again.'

'I like you.'

'Uh, I'm pretty sure you hate me because I'm a raging over-reacting feminist.'

'No, I think you're a raging, over-reacting human. I don't have nothin' against equality.'

'Did Natasha coach you to say these things?' she says, eyeing him over the rim of her bottle.

James bursts out laughing. 'God, no, I wish. I'd feel like I wasn't fuckin' up so bad. How am I doing? Pretty ok?'

'I've had worse.'

He laughs again. 'Reassurin'.'

'So let me get this straight, you're actually not a misogynistic poster-stealing traitor?'

'Well, I never stole the posters, did I? So not such an asshole.'

'Still a bit of an asshole.'

He grins and concedes, 'yeah, but you kinda dig it.'

'I had you pegged as a good guy with the asshole exterior not the other way around.'

'Hit me where it hurts, won't ya, Lewis.'

Darcy grins and shrugs, 'we've got to level your ego to mine.'

'You know, I used'a be much better with the ladies-'

'That's reassuring,' Darcy mutters. 

'-but you just.. you tick me off. And when I saw how angry you were about the posters I got Clint to help me to fix it all. Kinda useless because he'd been doing that to begin with but fuck it, an effort was made.'

'So I irritate you into being nice?'

'Sure.'

Darcy laughed. 'I can get behind that.'

'So that's, that's a yes?'

'That's a maybe, I'm still a little confused.'

'Look, I checked with Steve-'

Darcy's eyes almost pop out of her head and she groans. 'Jesus, are we in the 1940s? Am I being traded as property that you have to check whose title the deed is in? Gross.'

James frowns. 'Will you quit jumpin'. I wanted to know what had happened. He's my oldest, bestest friend, Darcy, I wasn't going to try somethin' if you both still had feelin's for each other.'

'Oh.'

'Yeah, oh,' he parries, petulantly.

'And..' she swallows here, because it still kind of itches there around the part that Steve used to be, '-what did he say?'

'He said to ask you.'

Darcy can't help but smile. Good old Steve. 'And?'

'And this is me, asking you.'

Darcy takes a moment to step away from this situation. On a Thursday night, on the first floor of Tony's balcony with the boy she kind of wants. The answer to his question was no, or it had been that week. Except it was more complicated now. In the sense that she was already feeling so small and confused. But still. Had she loved Steve a lot during their relationship-thing, yes. Had she cried for days after she'd overheard him talking to Clint all the reasons they couldn't be together? Yes. But did she want to go back to a relationship with one of her best friends where they had expectations for each other that were impossible to meet? No. 

So. 

'We.. we're better as friends,' and she sounds all shaky and unsure but it's true. And it kind of feels a little less scratchy in her throat now that she's said it.

She is surprised to find that Barnes looks sincerely relieved. 'Oh. Good,' he says, voice a touch higher than usual, 'and your general feelings on me?'

'I don't know you. I only know of you,' Darcy says. 

James grins around the lip of his beer, 'that could be a good thing.'

Darcy lets the leacherous grin broaden and he tips his head toward her. 

'But like you said, all our friends are friends and it's stupid that we don't hang out. So.'

Darcy definitely pats herself on the shoulder for attempting to start rationalising what is basically negotiating the terms of a date. It's  _adult._ It's  _growth._

'So, we should do that.'

She smiles.

'Definitely.'

And yet, she knows she wants this more because she wants the kind of fun that comes from being in a relationship. She enjoys the lead up and she misses the kind of brilliance that a new relationship starts. There's all that shimmery fun and everyone's speculation and it feels a lot like holding onto the group. Yes. Because, really, really, really, she wants James because she can and because she thinks its like a little piece of history all wrapped up nice and neat and cute. 

'If I suggest you come over and play COD, how do you feel about that?'

Darcy just laughs and it clicks. 'So it was Clint that helped you out.'

Barnes has the decency to look ashamed. 'I was hoping you wouldn't figure it out. He told me to go with that as first date material.'

'He knew I would agree. I'm a fucking boss at COD.'

'Dude, you haven't played against me. I bet you dinner you'll lose. Not by much,' he adds, 'but enough.'

Darcy raises an eyebrow. 'That's some smooth shit there, Barnes. I see your dinner and raise you breakfast the next day.'

And shit, if his expression isn't the best thing she's seen that day. And this is her, head first in the deep end, terrified and giddy because he likes her and its been a long time and she wants it. And well, because fuck it.

'BEER PONG!' Clint bursts out, to announce and Barnes grins. 

'How's your aim, Lewis?'

'Oh, you're on, Barnes.'

 

 

 

'Tony, why do all your parties end up like this?'

'Sweetheart, they're Stark parties.'

'God,' Darcy groans, burrowing into Bobbi's sweater, 'can you two shut the fuck up?'

Clint and Tony laugh and then ignore her to continue fostering her hangover. 'Did you see Wilson?'

'Which one?'

Tony smirks. 'Wade. Wade was totally hitting on Jess.'

'What?!'

'Oh yeah,' Tony says, full of glee, 'and she was kind of into it.'

'Tony, shut up, Jessica motherfucking Drew did not go home with Wade motherfucking Wilson.'

'Better clean your mouth out with soap and give me some money because you just lost that bet, honey.'

'Oh god, but she's so hot!' Darcy bemoans, 'what is she doing with that..'

'Piece of trash?' Bobbi supplies as she comes to raise Darcy from the dead with aspirin and orange juice and steal her jumper back. 

'You angel,' Darcy says and then regrets it as she loses a pillow, 'yes, that piece of trash.'

She glares at her until Bobbi sits down and offers her legs as penance.

Natasha lifts her head from Clint's lap to explain, 'they dated in highschool, and Jess thinks he's funny.'

'She does not!' Darcy cries, getting comfortable, 'what about him is funny? Everything is sad and pathetic and ironic.'

'Bitter,' Nat says, condescendingly. 

'I dumped him,' Darcy hisses at her, under her breath, 'it wasn't even a fling.'

Nat just smirks, smug as anything. 

'I don't know, I thought his crush on me was quite cute,' Clint says, proudly. 

Bobbi and Tasha groan. He leans back, putting his hands on his head.

'I'm rubbing off on you, young padawan,' Tony says to Clint and wipes away a single tear. Clint has the common sense to realise this is an insult and stops posturing. 

Darcy rolls her eyes at them. 'If only you could share your ego round, like a horcrux.'

'A what?' Steve asks.

'Oh my god, Steve. Harry Potter. You lived in hicksville but I'm sure they had libraries.'

'Well.. there was a bookmobile.'

 There's a collective moan, as there's a knock at Tony's front door. 

'Oh my god, Buck'd better have got me a latte,' Tasha mumbles and stumbles to her feet.

'See I never got that nickname,' Darcy says, chasing the aspirin down with the orange juice. 

Clint looks puzzled. 'His middle name is Buchanan, Darcy.'

Her eyes widen, 'oh!'

Natasha laughs, sidestepping all their legs to get to the door and let James in. 

'Oh you are a legend, you brought food!' Clint yells at him, leaping over the couch to steal a pastry and a coffee for himself.

'Oh my god, I was just thinking that I wanted croissants,' Tony says, helping himself to a coffee. 

'Someone should call Kam and America,' Darcy says as James dumps the holders onto the coffee table and chucks the change onto the bureau.

Bobbi eyes Darcy as James hovers a little awkwardly waiting for someone to move over. Darcy makes a face and then pouts at her before Bobbi huffs and shoves Nat's legs onto her lap. 'Love me,' Bobbi mouths at her, 'love me good, girl.' 

James smirks and sits down next to her. 'Someone should definitely not. I bumped into them at the coffee shop.'

'LOVE BUBBLE,' Clint screams before Nat slaps him.

'Jesus, Barton, shut up, we're all nursing hangovers,' Darcy mumbles.

Bobbi burrows under what was Darcy's (stolen) doona and starts to prod Bruce with her toe, asleep on the floor.

'Mmmhjdfkls?'

'Everyone shut up,' Tony says, 'Bruce says the funniest shit  when he's waking up..'

'No pineapples for you,' the boy at their feet stage whispers, 'only Barbies.'

Tony giggles.

'Speaking of hangovers, I vote we dose ourselves up with vodka to take the pain away,' Clint says. 

Bobbi rolls her eyes, 'okay, as a med student I'm just going to say that that doesn't-'

'Shut up BARBARA, you're doing sports science. IT'S NOT THE SAME THING.'

She grins. 'Common sense then.'

Clint and Tony decide to test the approach, while James and Nat start arguing about who won the beer pong last night. 

'Omg, it was me!'

Darcy earns herself a glare from James, Nat and Clint who takes the time to stop debating how much alcohol is needed before you numb your hangover.

'You did not,' James says, 'your elbow was over the line like a million times.'

'Hmph, you cheated like a million times Buchanan.'

He groans. 'Wench.'

Darcy wiggles her eyebrows. 

'Where'd Steve go? I saw him earlier,' Bobbi asks. 

James makes a face. 'Sam and him go running. Every day. It's healthy. Also a waste of time because he spends like 80% of his time with a puffer down his throat but whatever.'

'RUNNING. EXERCISE. GROSS.'

Darcy frowns. 'Clint, turn your hearing aids down, jesus.'

Clint turns to glare at James. 'I trusted you.'

'Never show me a vulnerability.'

'You should totally let me play with them,' Tony says, 'I could like, improve them.'

Clint rolls his eyes as he pulls them out, adjusting the manual audio toggle. 'Asshole, you'd probably try Mr. Gadget me like you tried with Buck's prosthetic.'

Tony grins, and signs want a blender attachment?, 'well, yeah, but like, still. That'd be cool.'

Clint slips them back in and adjusts for a second, muttering 'asshole,' under his breath.

'Should've let me paint them camo last night,' James says as Clint scowls at him. 

'I asked you to look after them and this is what you do to me.'

'Did it make your hangover worse?' James says, devilishly. 

'Go to hell,' Clint mutters, 'I was wondering why Nat was breathing on me so loud this morning and why Darcy sounded like a giantess.'

Nat smirks 'I was blowing air in your face to begin with,' as Darcy blows a raspberry.

'Oh, cool, yeah, thanks babe.'

Nat laughs and leans over to grab her phone. 'Oh, Pep's on her way up.'

'Is Bruce ever going to get up?' Bobbi asks, prodding him for like the fiftieth time. 

'Nah, he's out like a log. Last night's intoxicating extroversion kind of does him out,' Tony says. 

'Did Jane and Thor leave after beer pong or before King's Cup?'

'Before King's Cup,' James says to Darcy, 'cos Jane didn't want us playing with a bucket.'

'Spoil sport,' Clint says, 'I was totally going to win.'

'You have the constitution of a 14 year old,' Nat says, 'I would've won.'

'That's because you're a camel and don't need to pee for like months.'

'Mind over matter, baby,' to which Clint makes a disgusted face. 

'She didn't want us playing with Thor,' Bobbi says, 'he had that stuff from his dorm, that shit is home-brewed by a bunch of frat boys. It's probably rat poison and water.'

Clint makes a noncommittal noise. 'I've had worse.'

Nat rolls her eyes, 'baby.'

James laughs, 'to be fair, your grandmother's vodka does taste like shit.'

'You're both wusses.'

Clint huffs and flicks her cheek, 'it tasted like fire.'

'Fire cannot kill a dragon,' Nat sing-songs, 'I took it like a champ.'

'She was testing me!' Clint protests. 

Barnes scoffs. 'And you failed, buddy. Taschka's babushka ain't giving you her hand in marriage until you kill a boar and bring it to her. As like, the minimum.'

Clint pets Nat affectionately. 'You can kill your own boar, can't you, babe?'

'Duh,' Nat and Darcy reply. 


	4. so who the fuck told kate bishop i slept with wade wilson?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please be warned that there is an additional trigger warning for assorted mental health issues and people dealing with vague but nonetheless hurtful racial issues. If that is not your cup of tea, please be warned.

'I'm a gymnast,' Bobbi says, and there is the fear of god in Lance's eyes. 

'Christ Bob, I wasn't sayin' anythin'!'

Darcy sighs and leans balefully on Kate. 'This is all your fault, Bishop.'

'Rude,' she huffs at her, 'I'm not responsible for this mess.'

'Uh, you said you were going to run for Captain next year and it devolved into this moron questioning the veracity of cheerleading as a sport.'

'Oh. Yeah.' She grins.

'I'm sick of playing cupid,' Darcy mumbles, watching as Bobbi punches Lance and then glares at him. Adorable. 

'Pf, Darcy, you live for that drama.'

Darcy prods her in the side. 'You're no better.'

'I'm infamous, though, it's different.'

She laughs, 'sure, ok, hey, Jess isn't going to run for Captain?'

Kate snorts. 'Didn't you hear? She's dropping cheer.'

'Wh-, shit, what?'

Kate nods and swings her arm around her, 'Jess wants to take a gap year, defer or whatever.'

'Oh my god, this is because of Wade.'

Kate beams. Yup. But who cares, I'll take over the team when Bobbi graduates and I don't know, maybe Wanda will stop being so spacey and attend practice enough to take vice.'

Darcy whistles under her breath, 'and archery?'

Kate makes a face, 'ain't gonna be the same when that loser leaves. I'll see. Depends on if they want me to take over the club after Barton.'

Darcy hums and offers her a piece of gum. 'You gonna miss me?'

'Pf no, you're still going to come to all our home games, don't think you're going to get out of that.'

'Oh my god,' Darcy groans, 'I hate you.'

'Girl, you owe me so bad. You and your hijinks totally eclipsed my birthday,' Kate says, 'so like, buck up.'

'Wh-, pf, what- oh, ohhh, NO. COME BACK HERE. KATE! Who told you! Come-'

She gapes as Kate starts to jog off. 

'I'm going to get you back!'

'CYA ROUND LEWIS,' Kate yells, saluting her before flouncing off. 

 

 

 

 

Under things that Darcy represses, that one is listed under never-ever-ever-let-come-to-the-surface-ever-again. 

So, obviously, she skips out on Lance trying not to insult Bobbi and runs into the committee room to interrogate her asshole friends about which one of them told Kate. 

'SO WHO THE FUCK TOLD KATE BISHOP I SLEPT WITH WADE WILSON. IT WAS LIKE TWO TIMES. YOU ASSHOLES.'

One particularly smarmy looking freshman looks at her in shock and says, in a crisp English accent, 'sorry, only committee members are allowed.'

The Scottish boy beside her pipes up, 'err or, like, are you wantin' t' join?'

Darcy makes a face and sweeps a glance over the room. In front of her are seated fifteen freshmen, all bright-eyed and dressed like grade-schoolers. Some have decided to go the full hog and have bowties. 

'And uh, what exactly is this society for?'

And god, at this point, its best to pretend she didn't just run into a room full of randoms professing her sexual activities with the most notorious flirt on campus and just. keep. talking.

'We're talking nano biotech this week,' the first girl that had spoken, replies. She gives off that impression that she's saying something important when really when her mouth moves, Darcy only sees pinstripe matched with plaid. 

But sad sartorial choices aside, there are more pressing matters at hand. 'And your President is?'

A high-pitched giggle comes from the door behind her. 

Darcy just sighs. 

'Oh god.'

'The one and only!'

 

 

 

 

It's probably less than funny to hack into Kate's Facebook and like all the fan groups for Duck Dynasty but Darcy does it anyway. It's not like there is anything better to do when Tony keeps her hostage in his fan club. 

 

 

 

 

 **Kate Bishop** is in a complicated relationship with **Tommy Shepherd**. 

\- **Wade Wilson, Tony Stark**  and **3 others** like this.

 

 

 

 

That is also probably useless but Darcy feels a lot better. Especially because Tony just stopped messaging her about how 'HOW COME YOU DIDNT TELL ME' and 'I AM SO TRUSTWORTHY' 'PLZ U R SHIT FRIEND' and 'I SHOULD KNOW THINGS' because she threatened to tell Pepper about that one thing.

He texts her, blackmail eh u r levelling up ;)

 

 

 

 

She runs into Wilson, self-christened 'Deadpool' because he likes to give himself as many possible avenues for peer harassment as possible, coming out of the library of all places.

'DAR-CEE,' he sing-songs.

Darcy stops, winces, pivots and walks straight back into the library because hell was more likely to freeze over than for Wade Wilson to walk into a library under anything other than duress.

'Quick hide me,' she tells Kamala who straight up rolls her eyes because the girl thinks there is something redeemable even in Wilson. 

'Nah, you're good, no one sits next to the hijab girl.'

Darcy dumps her bag in the seat next to her and frowns because Kamala's the last to externalise all the shit she has to go through. 

'HYDRA, again?'

Kamala tugs at the pretty periwinkle cotton scarf at her shoulder and throws a dirty look over her shoulder. 'Moronic media campaign,' she mutters and slides her iPad to Darcy. 

It's a horribly photoshopped bastardised version of her and the tagline leaves a lot to be desired for the state of humanity. 'Tony's trying to get the site down but its not hosted on the university server, so, there's not much the board can do either.'

There is literally nothing in the world Darcy can say to express how shit she feels except to let Kamala hate-sketch into her notebook. 

 

 

 

 

 

The gang gets together that night, a wholesomeness to the gathering that gives Darcy that same feeling of time running out that she has to step out into the bathroom and press her palms into the cool grooves of the tile until her heart stops skipping at the thought of the end.

And even though its a non-fussy thing in Tony's lounge and they're all draped around the lounge eating Chinese even though Clint had wanted Pizza but Joe's had already closed so they'd all unanimously decided not to risk food poisoning (again) at Pizza Palace, it's a lot of left over cider from Thor's graduation and Pepper being annoyingly healthy but eating fairy bread because its ok, its vegan. Darcy leaves first, citing 'cramps' and at this point, the boys wince in well-educated sympathy rather than disgust.

She gets half way down the stairs before Nat appears by her side and quietly takes her hand.

'Walk back with me?'

Darcy just nods.  

 

 

 

When she wakes up the next morning, curled up around Nat’s duvet, Nat’s elbow digging into her side, it still feels like she’s trying to catch a breath that’s never quite deep enough.

This room won’t be theirs soon, this place won’t be home and they’ll have to go and do things and be things and make an effort to see each other.

She doesn’t try to entertain the idea of getting up out of bed, because at this point, it’s a little much.Nat crawls over her, prodding her awake only to blow a raspberry on her arm.

‘You staying?’

Darcy considers it again, thinks about Nat’s offer of breakfast with Kate and Clint and the possibility of running into James in the cafeteria after that awkward open offer of a date but really what gets her is the idea of having to get dressed.

‘Maybe later.’

Natasha pulls her duvet up to Darcy’s eyes and nods.

‘Maybe later,’ she agrees and then shuts the door quietly behind her.

 

 

 

 

Darcy doesn’t get out of bed until Monday. Technically, she does because she moves out of Nat’s and into her own sometime that day because she can’t stand the fact that the sun still gets around the blinds on Nat’s side. So she moves. But other than that, despite the four minutes she spends on the top floor microwaving some mac and cheese, a decision that leaves her so exhausted she can’t bring herself to eat it, she stays in bed.

It makes the exhaustion worse but it makes the queasy anxiety a little better. It’s not sleeping rather a lot of anxious tossing but she’s ok, this isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last but at the very least this rut is not a spiral.

 She’s ok, it’s ok, she’s trying. That’s something.

 

 

 

 

Her classes on Monday are pretty light, considering, and it isn’t until that afternoon that she sees anyone of note when she agrees to meet Sam on her side of campus at the weird little raw vegan food truck.

‘Wilson!’

Sam turns at the sound and offers her a huge smile before his face crinkles up quizzically and he has the audacity to say, ‘Girl, have you even slept?’

Darcy snatches her pre-ordered coffee from him and makes a face, ‘how are you not stressing about mid-sem? Everyone is stressing about mid-sem?’

Sam rolls his eyes and fumbles the change into the tip jar, trying to fit the quarter past the ant ecosystem they have beside it, ‘It’s called studying. Y’all should try it sometime instead of spending all that time complaining about how much you need to study.’

Darcy lets out an annoyed huff, ‘I got kicked out of Nat’s study group, so.’ She wipes her thumb over the lipstick imprint, smearing it across the rim.

‘She told me, I didn’t get colour-coded index cards?’

‘Right!’

He leads the way to the courtyard and swings into the picnic table seating with all the grace Darcy doesn’t have. 

'What's going down with STUPOL?'

She knows Sam is being indulgent when he _asks_ her about the factional war in the politics society. She lets it get to the point that his eyes start to glaze over with boredom before she lets up.

‘What did Nat say?’

Sam takes a moment to stop tracing the typeface on the cup to blush, ‘mmh?’

‘I _know_ you know.’

He looks about as apologetic as Sam can when he thinks he’s in the right and then shrugs, ‘she said somethin’ somethin’ about it.’

‘Yeah, what?’

‘Well are you going to do that thing where you say you’re OK when you’re not?’

Sam has that _schtick_ about him that is so earnestly helpful that Darcy shakes her head, ‘I promise.’

‘Ok. Good.’ His eyes snap across the courtyard and then back to her, ‘well, she didn’t say much, but, she just said it was a bout.’

Darcy shrugs, ‘you’re the group shrink, you tell me.’

‘Oh Darcy, c’mon, Wade is a shit-’

‘P-pardon?’

Sam looks guilty, ‘ok, she said that much.’

‘No, she didn’t! You _nosied_ Sam Wilson. You _nosied_ around. Kate told you.’

‘Nah, well yeah, sort of, I actually found out from Stark.’

‘Christ.’

Sam shrugs, ‘he was worried, too.’

Darcy huffs, ‘oh.’

‘Yeah, na duh, Lewis. So. Wade.’

Darcy thinks of the weekend and the crippling exhaustion that she still feels, double-caff or not. She thinks about the unfilled graduate applications and Bobbi starting to disassemble her room. She thinks about loneliness and rejection and  _Steve_ and god,  _Bucky_ and would Clint still be friends with her if not for the imperative of visiting Nat? And, and, oh  _fuck._

Oh god,

‘Darcy!?’

Sam stands an appropriate metre from her, which is odd, because she was sitting, but she finds herself cold, and her hands are rough. No. On rough. Her palms assert themselves on the concrete and she thinks about letting her knees buckle but she can’t, she can’t. She sucks in a breath, and, oh god, is this what it feels like to die?

‘Darcy, breathe, did it burn you? It’s just coffee. It’s ok.’

But she can’t. Not really. She can breathe, sure, but its not, not, not enough. She can’t. She can’t take it all the way down. The shortness gets stuck in her throat and she feels like she’s being pressed against the surface of the earth, feels like she’s going to die, she’s going to die, she’s going to,

‘Breathe with me, breathe in-‘

But, she can’t, she can’t even open her mouth and its all fuzzy, she’s just-

 

 

She comes to and god, Darcy just wants to curl back into herself. The embarrassment more than anything because, ‘I had a panic attack,’ she mumbles, to her feet and busies herself fumbling for her spilt coffee cup. 

Sam laughs, ‘no biggie, just like that.’

Darcy lets out a stuttered breath and tries to shake off the flush that is working itself up in jittery nerves all the way to the tips of her fingers, ‘I’m sorry I worried you. Practice for the big bad, right?’ Laugh it off, laugh it off.

‘I’m sorry I- triggered-,’ Sam starts, pressing the cold water bottle against the back of her neck, ‘-uh, shit, I should know better.’

‘It wasn’t Wade,’ Darcy stammers, annoyed, ‘like I could give a shit, you lot can’t judge me.’

‘Touché.’

‘No, it’s, uh, it’s a lot of things. Other.. things. Everything.’

Darcy tries to start somewhere, to explain, because talking over her embarrassment is a good way to distract herself from the nausea she feels over working herself up into a feint over something as stupid as _growing up_ but its more than that. It’s everything. Her stupid crush on James bloody Barnes and his stupid face and fourteen unreplied frantic messages from Jane and another twelve from Thor but really from Jane and the essays she hadn’t even _looked_ at, much less started and packing up their dorms and handing in their room keys and ordering their robes for graduation and calling parents for final, final, finals and finalizing student loans and completing internships and it’s just, shit, it's-

It’s everything.

But Sam doesn’t press, sits down next to her and when he moves the bottle to her forehead, she doesn’t protest.

 

 

 

 

1 New Message

 

_Bucky B._

Call of Duty, you and me. When?

 

 

 

 

It's like a week later, give or take some anxiety-induced insomnia during mid-sem when Darcy finally leaves her dorm to take James up on that offer of COD.

'Because you need it, Lewis. Trust me' is his response to her whinging and a week is enough time for her to regulate her anxiety levels and even though she still feels like she has waterfalls for sweat glands, she'll try to like pretend she's super, super low-key, whatever. So, she turns up at his dorm with salted caramel popcorn and dressed down, the sexy way, hair up in a messy pony-tail, sweater slipping off her shoulder to reveal a cute bra-let.

Like, I totally tried to not try to look like I didn't try to try.

She's got that aesthetic down.

She knocks. The lag time is ample delay for Darcy over-thinking. She starts to contemplate her stance (is this too aggressive?) and adjusting the way she's holding the bowl. Jesus, it's starting to amp itself up in her brain until she's whispering 'shit, shit such a bad idea, fuck-'

'Oh hey, Darcy,' Steve says, 'oh you brought popcorn! I knew I forgot something.'

Darcy's brain struggles to accommodate for this update and she just frowns, trying not to wince as her mind goes 'told you so.'

'Where's James?' she blurts out.

But Steve just beckons her into their dorm, 'he'll be a sec, he's showering.'

oh. 

And she kind of lets her self-doubt spiral at the set up in the living room. A set up that is clearly friendly rather than frisky.

'You found the controller, then?' Darcy says, slumping into their couch because she needs a moment to process three controllers, three beers, a shitload of candy and an ever-present Steve. It all feels too casual for her cutest underwear set. She feels really stupid like, how to behave around your ex- when you really want to have sex with his best friend.

Now there's an approach she'd never gotten tips from Cosmo about.

'I'm interrupting guys' night again, aren't I?' Darcy says, trying to keep from being really disappointed. She didn't plough through mid-sem exams just to be defeated by Steve cock-blocking her.

Steve shrugs, 'Nah, no one could make it. Sam might swing by later but he's still in exam block, so.'

He gets up to grab a bowl or some sort of non-porous contraption because it's a dorm and there's usually only one clean mug and a dessert spoon between the whole floor. She sinks back into the lounge feeling immensely sorry for herself because it kind of sucks sure, but like, it's also great because Steve has always been a good mediator and maybe this is a better idea than indulging her irrepressible nostalgia by sleeping with James.

'You good with beer?' Steve asks, 'cos I think we got some cider too. James said-'

She never does find out what it was that James had said because he appears, unshaven but still damp from the condensation in the bathroom but dressed in his football shorts and a crew neck.

And if Darcy was ever going to indulge in spirituality it was in this moment. Thank you, Jesus, for jawlines and crew-necks.

'Sup, doll,' he says and grins.

'Are you just avoiding the inevitable?' Darcy asks, waving the controller, tucking her legs up underneath her because she'd forgotten what that butterfly feeling was like and it was nice. 

He chuckles, throwing his towel onto a chair and taking a seat next to her and good lord jesus, he smelt like clean and boy. She tried to pass off her irritation as indignance.

'I been lookin' forward to this game a'while now, actually, since you talked y'self up so much.'

Steve takes her left flank and grabs a controller, swiftly skipping them through the menu selections.

'You think she's boasting, but she ain't, Buck. Darcy's good.'

'Well if the good Captain says so,' James says and winks at her.

Darcy just rolls her eyes and swigs her beer. It's ok, it's fine. It's not like she's horny and he smells like something she'd like to bask in, it's better that she's still chugging down Thor's leftover homebrew. There is only one way to regain her sense of self. 

Ruthless assassinations and some good cheats.  

 

 

 

 

'I can't believe you're arguing about this,' she says, for the third time, kind of enjoying the sound of her own voice echoing to complete and utter ignorance.

'Steve, for real, go and get beer!'

'It's a matter of principle, Buck.'

Darcy has never enjoyed being in the middle of something before. She smiles like a cat as James huffs, getting really handsy with her knee as he prods Steve in the chest with his other.

'I invoke the bro-code.'

Steve guffaws. 'No tickets.'

'What do you mean no tickets I handed your essay in yesterday! That’s like _four._ '

'You were walking to Morales' office, it was on your way!'

'It's a matter of principle,' James parrots back.

'Are you serious?'

'Yes.'

'You're a punk, you know that, a real bloody punk.'

James' whole face goes from consternation to triumphant in 0.01 seconds.

'CAPTAIN GOOD CAPTAIN.'

Steve hauls himself off the couch and Darcy's prettttty sure flips James off before he grabs his wallet, keys and passive-aggressively struts off.

'You wouldn't think he'd need such a hint,' James says, and he's a lot closer to her than he'd been five seconds ago which is enough for her stomach to flip and for all the  anxious anticipatory queasiness to return to her stomach.

'Wh-what?'

'This was not boys night.'

'Steve-... sorry?'

'I told Steve you were comin' over and he blatantly misheard me when I said it was a date.'

And Darcy thinks she's supposed to make words, like reciprocal words to his words but he's like, wow, wow. She thinks it’s probably proper to be banter-y but her hands have skipped all of that and gone straight to touching.

It's surprisingly a lot easier to come off cool and collected, her subconscious utilising muscle-memory from all the previous encounters she's had and she kind of just goes with it because one minute she was sitting between two boys but like, like men and now her hands are getting acquainted with previously unacquainted boy and words, they're just not, necessary, you know?

James' low chuckle draws her mind from its dirty, dirty fast forward into pornographic visualisation and she remembers she's like a lady. 

'I totally thought I'd read you wrong,' she huffs and pushes him away, 'like, totally.'

He does this really annoying half-shrug thing and Darcy swallows. Hard. 

'So, what say you and I take this,' but he trails off to start tracing despicable things into her collarbones. 

Darcy can't help the irrepressible shiver than runs up her spine and then trickles all the way back down in the anxious twist in her gut. Because, Steve is totally not the type to police anyone for anything, calls a spade a spade and doesn't stand for any kind of deprecating bullshit of the gendered double-standard. He was not the type to get in-between anything. Especially since he'd had his run of flings since they'd broken up. And yet, and yet, he'd shown up. 

Deliberately. 

The fuck?

'Oh god, James, shhh, stop, stop,' Darcy mumbles, pulling him up to face her, palms flat against his cheeks and then, 'why was Steve here?'

Barnes frowns then shrugs. 'Kid doesn't know how to take a hint.'

'Bullshit,' Darcy breathes out and drops her palms to her lap, 'I call bullshit.'

James sits back then, drapes an arm over the couch and starts to fiddle with the strap of her bra let. 

'You ain't gunna let it go.'

She watches his jaw tense and she tenses. She wishes she could just override the voice in her head that is screaming at her to forget about her ex-boyfriend playing interference to her libido and just _go for it_ but she can’t. She _can’t_ make her brain stop the rolling track of insecurities and what if Steve is going to hate me? Or I fuck up their friendship? And she just, 'James, fuck, yes?'

He swings round to face her, sinuous even in motion and she lets him pull her hands into her lap and stare her down. 

'He's still, like, into you' he drags it out, chewing on it, long and hard and Darcy straight up laughs. 

What?

'James, like, no, he's-.. he wouldn't! We're not-, god, we're so not right. There is literally no one worse for each other, we're so, not. No. No. Steve was _very_ clear.'

He interlaces their fingers and eyes her, 'well, that's what you think. Never said he was emotionally intelligent, did I? Only said he thinks he wants you back.'

'He would just- he wouldn't..'

James shrugs. 'Don't think he knows it, not really, he thinks he's just, I don't know, protecting you or some shit.'

'From you?' Darcy splutters and then rolls her eyes because really.

She likes that he grins back at her like he knows and she likes that he doesn't preface it with any I'm the big bad wolf bullshit because that's so old. 

'He never told me what went down with you two, just that it was bad, so, that told me more an' I expect he thought it would.'

Darcy feels the anxiety wash over her, the feeling of inadequacy that she'd worked so hard to resolve. She settles on, 'it was.'

James' fingers dig into the spaces between her fingers and he breathes out quietly.

 'I just reckon, well,' and he bends down to kiss her fingertips and Darcy feels that precipice, knows it so well, when someone is about to say the thing that nudges you off the crevice, hurtling down, inertia and self-loathing all propelling you back to the ground. It's this high, this sweet nice-ness that precedes it that she misses so much, didn't know it would all come back to ground zero so fast. 

'-I reckon you need to talk to him, and we should like, take it slow.'

Darcy lets out a soft sigh, lowers her lashes all the way to resting and lets that sink in nice and deep and low. She has to talk to Steve. Like this is her fault. Her fault that he didn't just tell her he still had feelings for her. Like it's her fault that he's like, feeling like he has prior claim? 

She huffs a little and extricates their fingers, ''kay,' she settles on, because there's nothing more to say. 

'Do you want to go before he gets back?'

And even though its supposed to be meant sincerely, she can't help but feel really shit about it anyway. 

What a waste of clean lingerie. 


	5. sigma kappa and a fugue state

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy leaves her bedroom for a party (what! congrats girl!), meets some more of the MCU and shit goes down.

She drags herself up the hill from the boy's dorms where Steve and James live, all the while checking if any one of her friends isn't shacking up with their significant other so she can force them into pitying her. A scour of their respective locations on 'Find my Friends' makes her all the more annoyed. Everyone is somewhere relatively innocuous, probably making out and being all romantic. 

Except for Bobby and Lance who are either fucking or fighting in the hockey shed and its anyones guess with those two. 

She slumps onto the side of the hill, feeling really terrible. And its stupid, she knows its stupid because he's just a dumb boy - both of them are just dumb boys - and who needs them right? But when every single available pseudo-therapist is currently happily coupled off, she just feels shitty and annoyed. All because of Steve. Steve and his stupid feelings. 

The worst part is, Darcy doesn't know how he could possibly like her when he spent half of their relationship resenting her for being the way she is and the other half resenting himself for resenting her for how she was. They were hard on each other. Steve wanted Darcy to know what she wanted, and plan for the future and the very idea of having to make plans greater than filling up her requisite major units was daunting and terrifying and awful. And Darcy took his 'improvement' jibes to heart, couldn't remember his compliments and couldn’t forget complaints for weeks as they ate her up from inside. It wasn't that Steve had any standards for her but she didn't feel like enough and then when she'd overheard him talking to Clint about her, all the things he'd said, all the faults in her, that she'd known he'd seen, she'd had enough. 

They'd both agreed they were so good as friends. That was how they'd started, too. And she'd thought they'd resolved it as amicably as two people who were so inextricably intwined in each others' lives  _could_  break up. Darcy had the nonchalance down to an art form. But now, ugh, it was all going to get dredged up again. Didn't Steve know how to do subtle jealousy? Didn't he know there were rules about this sort of thing? Non-interference and respecting choices etc etc? Wasn’t he into Sharon!?

Sitting there on the hill, she feels huge. There is nothing about the expansive night that makes her feel small. Instead, there is a backdrop of shitty house electronica from the same frat house from the other night and the noise from the basketball teams' training session in the gym. She feels huge and she feels awkward and all she'd wanted was to alleviate the slight hunger for intimacy and validation and not have to deal with the emotional landmine that was her ex. 

It didn't occur to her that choosing her ex-boyfriends' best friend _would_ complicate that. 

'Lewis?'

'Sam!' she splutters, and drags her itchy sweater across her eyes to smear the eyeliner tears away, 'did you drag yourself away from studying for me?' she sings out, as he comes down the path towards her. 

He grins and squints as he steps off of the lighted path. 'Darcy, you always beat cognitive developmental theory, you should know that.'

Darcy goes for something like a grin. 'You flatter me.'

'Well, you, uh, heading down now?'

Darcy shakes her head, 'nah, they kicked me out because they're sore losers.'

Sam laughs and offers her a high-five. 'Damn, girl, up for round two? I'd pay to see James cry.'

Darcy shrugs quickly, 'nah, can't, I gotta hand in-uh, a report, for-'

'I thought you'd finished?'

'Exams, yeah, uh, this is a hand-in thing, anyway, I, uh, I'll see you 'round. We'll play sometime.'

Sam looks unsure but his eyes don’t stick on the dirty tear tracks so she figures, small blessings. 'Sure, sure.'

He gives her a mock salute and Darcy nods, keeps nodding until he’s just a small moving speck on the horizon. It’s a lot, she thinks, to make it all the way up to her dorm and so she buries her face in her sweater and cries.

 It’s too sad, too much, for the early afternoon but what was new?

 

 

 

When she finally gets back to her dorm, its dark, the security lights are already on and America is standing at the door, glaring at her as she approaches.

‘Who burst your bubble?’

America sweeps her hair off her shoulder and rolls her eyes, ‘Tony.’

‘Surprise, surprise,’ Darcy mutters, swiping her keycard against the reader. She lets them both into the room and America takes up residence on Nat’s bed.

‘He’s not helping.’

Darcy takes one look at America, who doesn’t look like she has any intention to leave until she has fully dissected Tony Stark’s less than admirable attempts to help Kamala and the effect this is having, presumably, on America’s sex life or lack thereof.

So, she sits down on the floor, her bed as a backrest and peels her eyes open, rebels against the cakey feeling of dried up tears and groans sympathetically, ‘did he take the website down?’

America huffs, ‘well, sure, but it’s his fault this whole thing started!’

‘Did anyone manage to get those dumb supremacists kicked out of the community lounge?’

Darcy pastes on her best consolatory expression as America’s face changes to irritated consternation.

‘Fuck, no, HYDRA is still using _student amenities_ to preach about whatever the fuck extremist bullshit they’re spewing.’

‘Can’t Pepper do something?’

America clicks her teeth, ‘well, no, cos, _freedom_ of speech crap. They were squawking about infringement of their amendment rights and what not and yet they’re vilifying students on campus but the faculty doesn’t even _care._ ’

Darcy reaches under her bed to drag her basket of socks out digging around until she reaches the stash of chocolate underneath.

‘Reese’s pieces?’

America nods sullenly and then crawls over to sit by her and snatches Darcy’s pillow to use as a comfort.

‘I didn’t come here to talk about this crap with Kam,’ she inserts after a pause.

Darcy places the bag of chocolate down between them and glances at her before taking a second to chew.

‘Oh no?’ she tries, lightly, feeling her pulse start to race.

‘No, no, I came here to talk to you about Bobbi.’

Darcy tries not to let every single bone in her body heave with relief. ‘Kay,’ she starts, ‘what’s up with Bob?’

‘Oh,’ America frowns, twisting round to face her, chin propped up on the pillow, ‘uh, the surprise party?’

_Her birthday._

‘Sure,’ Darcy says, ‘she said she wanted dinner at Pasco’s.’

‘And what are we getting her?’

Fuck. _Fuck._ Darcy had actually completely forgot about Bobbi’s birthday what with all the shit going on. And she feels guilty momentarily, but then it fades to a deep sense of tiredness. Or rather, her tiredness is momentarily waylaid by a sense of guilt at being such a shit friend but then exhaustion overwhelms everything else again. Its so deep in her bones she feeds gargantuan effort into saying, ‘I’ll, um, organize something and get everyone to pitch in. Same as last year.’

America picks herself up from the floor, all limbs, and pops the collar on her denim jacket looking so artfully disheveled Darcy feels ashamed for ever feeling any sense of pride for her outfit.

‘Duty calls,’ she says and pulls Darcy to her feet. She ducks down and grabs the Reese’s from her feet.

‘I’ll transfer you the money tonight or I’ll never do it.’

Darcy snorts, ‘don’t take my chocolate!’

But she follows America out to the stairs, intending to walk her out.

‘Sometimes,’ America murmurs, and Darcy is not entirely sure she is even supposed to hear, ‘I’m not sure what the lesson is.’

Darcy wraps her arms around herself and trudges down towards the ground floor as America drags her fingers on the bannister.

‘You know, like, Kamala keeps saying that we can learn gratitude or something for this but I’m just sick of it. I’m sick of having it hang over my head.’

Darcy feels that immutable sense of uselessness when these issues make the people around her feel so awful and affect them so inherently and she gets a free pass on account of the level of melanin in her skin. It is _unfair._

‘You know America how you asked me what I wanted my superpower to be,’ Darcy asks, ‘well I’d want it to be the power to rehabilitate people. Wave my magic super hero power gauntlet wand thing and just make them not suck.’

America coughs on a half-hearted laugh, ‘yeah? That’s better than what you said last time.’

‘Oh okay, everyone wants to be able to read minds!’

America takes another Reese’s piece from the bag and hands them back to her, ‘sure, but I think I’ve had enough of knowing what’s on people’s minds.’

Darcy winces and America lets herself out, ‘I’ll cya ‘round.’

With nothing but a half-empty packet of chocolate, and her roommate probably spending the night at Clint’s, she starts to lock up the foyer after America when a hand shoots across around the glass door and a sneaker jams itself across the threshold.

‘Sharon?!’ Darcy splutters and pulls open the door to reveal a ruthlessly angry Sharon Carter.

Sharon takes one look at her and, ‘the one and only,’ she says.

Darcy tries to ignore the thick sarcasm. ‘Did you forget your key card?’

‘No, someone _stole_ my keycard,’ Sharon says.

Her strides are gargantuan and Darcy finds herself half-jogging to keep up. It occurs to her that the reason she wants to talk to Sharon is to set the record straight about Steve, a record she realizes she was the only one that was wrong about.

‘Oh, shit, that sucks,’ which she realizes is turning into a running jingle for her.

Sharon flashes her a scathing look and starts slogging up the stairs at a truly inhuman pace.

‘Hey, uh,’ Darcy starts, over gulps of air, ‘I, uh, just wanted to say sorry about uh, Steve. I really.. I really don’t want you to think that I-’

Sharon’s doesn’t even look angry just irate when she stops, causing Darcy to narrowly miss running straight into her.

‘Look Lewis, I know there’s something going on between you two because Steve doesn’t lie. At least. So, please, go out or don’t but don’t start trying to patch things up with me or whatever this is because you feel guilty.’

Darcy doesn’t even realize that she’s stung until Sharon has already disappeared into her room.

 

 

 

 

Darcy doesn’t sulk or huff, Darcy _drowns_ in her own anxieties which is why she practices self-care 101 and decides to attend the frat party her study group invited her to until they disinvited her from the study group.

If perhaps she hooks up with a cute boy, great. If the said frat boy is a silent type, well, the universe is clearly sending good vibes her way. If he is also someone she has not slept with before, well then clearly things are _looking up._

 It is not a premeditated plan to go. Instead, she starts drinking the moonshine Thor’s boy’s made at around 3 in the afternoon and by 8 when it starts, going out seems like a fantastic idea. Normally alcohol makes her incredibly sad but seemingly when breathing is difficult at this time, the influence seems to work in reverse.

 She doesn’t remember much of the walk down to Sigma Kappa but she remembers walking into the house. The hockey boys had rigged the place with fairy lights which they say are up early for Halloween which means that they’ve been up since last Christmas.

 The walk over had killed the buffer-y, beautific vibe that the alcohol had given her, starting to exacerbate the feeling of jittery nausea that was lingering around her. She stumbles over to the drinks table and finds the nearest empty-ish red cup and fills it to the brim with an assortment of whats on the table.

‘Looking to get loose?’

Darcy doesn’t look up from judicious pouring of rum or rum-looking liquid and shrugs, ‘I’m doing my best.’

‘I know you – Darcy, right? – you were in my POL495 – the counter-terrorism unit? Man, that class was torture.’

Darcy squints at him and then takes a step forward, his figure blurring and thinks to ask him why he’s swaying like that. ‘Pun. Ha. Oh, its Mitch?’ she blurts out, ‘Matthew?’

‘Matt, Matt Murdoch. Nice little alliteration there for you.’

Her brain takes a long while to curl itself around the word alliteration before it gives up and she just laughs, ‘sure.’

‘So what brings you to this hell-hole?’

Darcy laughs, ‘one of the girls in my study group used to be sleeping with one of the guys in this house, Froggy?’

Matt stutters out a laugh and then for some reason looks embarrassed and stops himself, ‘Foggy.’

Darcy looks quizzically at him, ‘Your memory?’

Matt guffaws and then, ‘no, it’s his name.’

‘His name is Foggy.’ That was even stupider than Froggy. Froggy at least sounded like there was a good story to be had.

‘Right. And you? You don’t seem a Sigma Kappa,’ she says and dramatically eyes him up and down, ‘you seem like a book nerd. Wait –‘ and her brain helpfully supplies some anecdotal information about him, ‘you’re the Murdoch!’

‘Good or bad?’ Matt asks, reproachfully.

‘I am neither judge nor juror,’ Darcy replies gleefully, ‘but I do recall an unfortunate story about Halloween and a certain costume malfunction.’

Matt groans, ‘you wear lycra one time, and I swear..’

‘I don’t think there was a single girl complaining – and I heard the story third hand.’

‘It was totally not like that,’ Matt replies, horrified, ‘I was told it had _give.’_

‘I don’t think the guy at the hire store said anything about keg stands.’

‘I was trying to finish it with dignity,’ Matt mutters, ‘now I’m a living legend.’

‘You’re certainly a dare devil – I was impressed, from what I heard, it turned out to be great in the end. Got a few offers from the cheerleading team.’

Matt laughs at that, ‘Bobbi just loves a good victim.’

‘Never heard truer words.’

‘You don’t actually remember me from that class at all, do you?’

Darcy tries to look repentant, ‘I don’t remember much from first year. Mostly I was high.’

He grins, ‘I do – or at least, I remember you. You actually gave a really good presentation on the futility of counterterrorism measures. It was actually one of the reasons I switched my major.’

Darcy gaped, ‘it was that bad?’

‘Nah, not at all, I switched to law. Figured I could do more good. As you said, we’ve sort of nailed ourselves to a slippery slope.’

Darcy nodded, ‘I remember that presentation. Our professor was ex-Mossad and I don’t think he appreciated my-’

‘Him? Military? No way!’

Darcy nodded, ‘I did some digging – it’s all circumstantial but I think he alluded to it in a lecture and I had to find out.’

Matt looked impressed, ‘Suran doesn’t look like he’d hurt a fly, though.’

Darcy grinned, ‘that’s the point.’

 

 

A few hours later, Darcy found herself almost sober with a very warm, very full cup of poison and Matt, outside on the house porch in their hammock. She’d found herself getting progressively more sober and yet not progressively more anxious or depressed. He was engaging and sweet and he was into her, that much was clear. It was flattery on a lot of levels considering she knew more of her eyeliner was on her cheeks than her eyes and that there was a small but noticeable beer stain on her denim skirt.

She sat up, envigorated, ‘lets go for a walk.’

Matt startled, seemingly half-asleep and shrugged.

Leading him outside, Darcy sipped on her slush. ‘Are you finishing this year,’ she asked.

Matt nodded, ‘I got into NYU for grad school – I start in November.’

Darcy slipped her hand into his, just to see what that felt like, ‘moving to the east coast, huh, all by your lonesome?’

Matt side-eyed her, ‘no girlfriend, no, but Foggy’s coming with me.’

‘You’re both doing law?’

‘We’ve kind of done everything together.’

Darcy’s heart clenched and she let go of his hand, downing the rest of her drink, ‘uh huh.’

Most of her friends were graduating – Bobbi’s room was devoid of posters now, just stacks of books – only Kam and America were going to be here next year to finish Honours programs before grad school. Nat was presumably going to go work for the UN or some classified government department or something, Clint had quietly applied to the military.. everyone was going to be spread out across the country and she was right here. Still wishing she could rewind to her first year, do it all over, be a better friend, be a better, better, better. Fix it all with Steve so it wasn’t so fucking awkward, kiss Barnes just for the feel of his mouth on hers, have gone to that other New Years Eve party last year where Nat and Clint finally hooked up, where Tony told Pepper I love you where everything, _everything_ had happened while she was breaking up with Wade Wilson on the football fields, crying her eyes out and wishing in that moment that they had never hooked up because Wade looked crushed in that moment and she couldn’t watch herself disappoint someone all over again.

Her heart was right there in her throat, breath hard to pass around the lump of anxiety in her throat. It was right there.

‘Matt!’ someone yelled and Darcy jumped a foot as Matt gave her an apologetic look.

‘Shit, I forgot my dorm key with Foggy – let me just go grab it.’

‘Sure,’ she supplied, ‘I’ll be here.’

He gave her a broad, excited smile and dashed back to the house.

The field behind the house was just lawns and trees and a few weird art sculptures that the arts majors had put up (nobody mentioned how bizarre they were to Steve after that one time he’d ranted on about how they were all heathens and didn’t understand symbolism for half an hour).

She yawned, feeling the exhaustion hit her again now that the need to perk up for another human being had gone.

It didn’t creep up on her, it was just sudden and she felt so tired, so so tired. Her eyes shut on their own and suddenly she was on the grass, slumped against the shiny silver blob that everyone called Casper because it looked like the friendly ghost but was supposed to be a remark on consumerism, or something. It was still hot from the sun that day and it burned her but it was also extremely pleasant. She made to move but her limbs felt so, so heavy and it was impossible to move, her entire body felt leaden, warm and even though it was digging into her back after a second, the pain was gone.

 

 

 

 

Oh god, the pain was definitely there. _Definitely._ But that was definitely what she deserved but she did not deserve the _intense_ nausea that accompanied it. She moved slightly and realized she was underneath sheets of some sort, as they bunched around her waist. Her skirt had ridden up to around her waist and she stiffened when she looked around and realized she was not in her own dorm.

There was art _everywhere_ and she closed her eyes again. _Please please please_ be a random art student I seduced. Please please _please._

She opened one eye, dragging her hair out of her face and looked to her left. The wall was empty, save for one academic calendar with some random appointments scribbled in. By her feet was a scrunched up set of sweatpants and a crew neck. Oh god. Oh _god._  

Was this Matt’s room?

Had she slept with Matt Murdoch?

Darcy remembered flirting with him, Darcy remembered cuddling him on the hammock. She remembered crystal clear when he ran back to the house. She remembered walking down the hill a little and then.. 

She tried to push forward with her memory, tried to find some flash to hang onto. Nothing.

Huh. Weird.

Darcy was not a black-out drinker. In fact, the universe had cruelly decided that she would forevermore remain lucid during her drinking to ensure maximum embarrassment in the future. And yet, nothing. She could not remember if she had seen Matt again, she could not remember how she had ended up in this room, she could not remember who she had slept with – if she had slept with anyone. She didn’t _feel_ like she’d had sex with anyone.

She hadn’t drunk _that_ much. Sure that cocktail she’d mixed for herself had been disgusting but it had mostly been beer and she was still clothed. She was still clothed. Oh god. She could feel her heart racing, her wrists shaking as she slipped her hands under the covers to check she had underwear on.

Her fingers palmed her underwear and she breathed out in queasy relief and then shifted up to drag her skirt down. The movement ached and she felt her back seize up. She yelped.

‘The fuck,’ she winced and pushed herself up.

Gingerly, she pulled her shirt up, stuttering over her breath as it peeled away from her back. Her fingers caught on what felt like crusted over blood and Darcy felt her eyes flood with tears.

‘Oh motherfucker,’ she whispered, as her fingers skipped over scabs.

Had she fallen? Had she knocked her head? She had drunk _no where near_ enough to completely forget the night. Mostly her drinking resulted in bad chronology or a little less inhibition but this? She’d felt light, euphoric and not her usual loud, sarcastic, depressive mess. The night had been easy, flirting with Matt had been easy.

She tried to ease herself out of bed, trying to move her back as little as possible and then placed her feet carefully on the carpet as a wave of intense nausea hit her. She knew this place. She had been here. She knew exactly where the bathroom was and exactly how the door jarred so you had to lift it up and through. The thought was quickly overshadowed by an intense need to throw up before her head started to spin off its fucking axis. She barely registered throwing open the door and burying her head in the toilet before she heard someone appear next to her and say, ‘how you doin’, doll?’

Darcy collapsed over the toilet bowl, leaning her head on her arms and groaned.

Just her fucking luck.

 

 

 

 

Bucky passes her a hand towel and sits behind her, gathering her hair up off her back and letting out a low whistle.

‘Darce..’

‘Don’t,’ she whispers, ‘don’t start with me, yet.’

He takes the hair tie off her wrist, gently and ties up her hair. He says nothing which is oddly more damning than if he had started lecturing her. Darcy presses her eyes into her forearms, lets the pressure create black and white shapes, stars bursting into light like a kaleidoscope of monotone colour. When it starts to settle into the darkness, she presses harder.

There is nothing. No memories, no flashes. Just her shitty decision-making.

He helps her up off the floor and as she starts for the kitchen, he catches her, wetting the hand towel he’d given her.

‘C’mere a sec,’ he mumbles and pinches her chin between his fingers. He’s so close as he wipes the grime or blood or whatever the fuck off her face.

She cannot stand the concerned look on his face and shuts her eyes and just tries to _breathe._

But it smells like him – both of them really. This bathroom. This house. There’s a nostalgia to her memories of this dorm room. They didn’t break up here – they never had an argument here. There’s the smell of Steve’s old spice shampoo, there’s the faint tinge of James’ aftershave.

Her back twitches angrily as her shirt sticks on a particularly raw patch of skin and she shudders.

James pulls back instantly and gives her the most dejected guilty look she’s ever seen. It takes every bit of nauseous, left-over will power she has not to just punch him in the face and then cry.

 

 

 

 

‘How did you find me?’

They sit on the couches, Darcy propped against five pillows and her legs over James’ lap. She tries to ignore the way his hands have settled on her calves and concentrate on not vomiting in the cup of water he has given her.

Bucky grimaced at her, ‘We were playing half-court,’ at her confused look he added, ‘basketball, down in the gym and when we finished, we saw you. You fell against Casper – you know, the sculpture thing and well, I could tell it was you, you’re just _tiny._ ’

Darcy hiccoughed on a gulp of water and winced at him, ‘and then?’

He looks at her seriously, ‘Darce, you must’ve taken something.  You were stutterin’, couldn’t walk – your back was messed up something awful. Did someone hurt you?’

He’s clenching his jaw, looks like he’s restraining himself from saying something and she wonders what she looks like, what he _thinks_ happened and she starts to feel the familiar prickle behind her eyes, feels her breath stutter.

The tears come just as she’s gasping over breaths – so much for that fucking will power.

‘Darce, please, if someone did this to you we need to get you to the hospital – fuck, I should’a taken you last night but you just fell asleep and you just seemed drunk. I should’a – I thought you’d fell an’ slipped, fuck, I’m so sorry-’ it’s painful, hearing him so angry at himself when she was such a stupid idiot. Such a stupid, stupid girl.

‘I didn’t – I don’t – I don’t know..’

Bucky looks incensed. ‘If you’re protectin’ some stupid motherfucker, I swear to god, doll.’

‘I don’t- I don’t remember..’ she whispers, ‘I was with Matt-’

‘Ellis? The guy from HYDRA?’ Bucky stutters in disgust.

Darcy coughs over the tears and the indignation burns through her, ‘fuck you, of course not!’

‘Then who? Wait, Murdoch? Murdoch did this to you? What the fuck?’

‘You know him?’

‘Uh, we went to Church together.’

‘What?’

Bucky shrugged, ‘we grew up in Brooklyn, it’s not a big place.’

‘I don’t – I knew him from first year, or he knew me – and nothing happened? I mean..’

‘Tell me what you remember Darcy,’ he all but growls and Darcy didn’t know him better she would’ve recoiled in jarred anger at being subjected to the inquisition.

But his eyes were tight, his jaw was wired shut and he looked so scared.

‘I got to the Sigma Kappa party – I’d been drinking, I grabbed a drink and then talked to Matt – or he came over as I was grabbing a drink. We chatted about school and like he grew up in Hell’s Kitchen and like being a lawyer. Then I mean, I only had one drink, jesus, we went for a walk – Froggy, sorry, Foggy told him he’d forgotten his keys and I.. I don’t remember.’

‘You didn’t seem him again? He just left you in the woods?’

Darcy rolled her eyes, ‘they’re not woods, they’re lawns. I was on campus. It’s not like he abandoned me in Yosemite.’

Bucky groaned, ‘And then? Nothing?’

Darcy leaned back against the cushions and shrugged, ‘I got to the sculpture and I kind of collapsed I guess – it’s so.. foggy from there. I think I passed out. It wasn’t even that late – like 11.30?’

‘That’s where I found you,’ Bucky mutters, his grip on her calves tight and scared, ‘Sam woke you, splashed some water on you but you were.. you seemed totally fucked.’

‘I don’t think anything.. - what time did you guys finish?’

Bucky shrugged, ‘I dunno – maybe around then. Maybe later.’

‘It would’ve been hard for someone to get me somewhere private, fuck me up and then bring me back in that time.’

Bucky’s entire face shuttered down into angry silence.

‘Hey – I mean,’ Darcy started and didn’t really know where she was going with it, ‘it’s okay, I’m an idiot.’

‘Did you pour your own drink?’ he asked, quietly.

‘Yes,’ Darcy said – that part of the night was clear as day.

‘Matt didn’t put anythin’ in your drink?’

‘Jesus, no.’

‘Just checkin’,’ he said, icily.

‘Hey, hey.. it’s okay, I just drank too much.’

‘So you had more than one drink?’

‘No but I dunno, I had been drinking and I drunk too much.’

‘Somethin’s not adding up, Darce. You drink with Tash – neither of you are exactly lightweights.’

‘I didn’t eat.’

He eyed her angrily, ‘yea, I can tell. You’ve also disappeared for the past week – I shouldn’t have told you about Steve. I shouldn’t have done this to you.’

‘Wait, this isn’t your fault. I drank too much.’

He glared at her in disbelief. ‘That story doesn’t add up and you know it. What _happened_.’

Darcy groaned, angry and frustrated, ‘I don’t REMEMBER!’

‘…you said you poured your own drink, did you bring your own?’

Darcy frowned, ‘no.. there was like rum or something, I just grabbed a-’

And she remembers grabbing the red cup, sniffing it and then chugging the slightly salty liquid down before adding the rum and beer. Remembers the slightly salty tang on her tongue she’d thought was leftover margherita.

‘I think someone.. put rohypnol.. in the cup I took.’

‘It wasn’t meant for you?’

Darcy shook her head, ‘no,’ she whispered, her mind already onto some poor girl with more than a scratched back, who hadn’t been found by her friends, who was waking up in some dorm room and being kicked out by some asshole who’d taken and taken and taken and Darcy clamped her hand over her mouth and gasped, ‘oh my god.’

Before she knew it, James was dragging her into his lap, his arms around her, pressing his lips to her hair and whispering that it was okay, murmuring _shh_ every so often that she was half-asleep before she realized she was crying.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am v v sorry that this has taken so long to finish - but it is complete (on my computer, anyway) just needs to be edited and thats it. It can finally be posted. Its been a longtime goal of mine to make that happen for all my incomplete fics. So here you go!


	6. whats a few more hours when i've waited this long?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> smut, basically. but also, tying off some loose ends. enjoy.

Its early afternoon – she can tell by the position of the sun (clearly Barnes sleeps on the same side of the room as Nat) and she doesn’t want to move. The nausea has eased and she’s only left was a sincere desire to eat something greasy and deliriously bad for her but its comfy here.

 The a/c is on and the air is brisk enough to borough deeper into the cocoon, bring James’ arm up from where its clenched around her shirt to around her waist.

He makes a sleepy noise, turns so his body is flush against her back and pulls her into him.

‘C’mere, come closer,’ he mumbles and she relents, curling into him and for the first time in hours or days – she can’t remember the last time really, she feels safe.

 

 

 

She’s scrolling through UberEats on his iPad trying to decide on a pizza to order when he shifts behind her and mumbles, ‘get the meatlovers.’ Every single hair stands up on her body and she breathes out, just enough to let her heart simmer a little.

‘Evening sir,’ she whispers.

‘Evenin’ doll.’

Darcy clicks order and then turns slowly onto her side. He relinquishes the tight hold on her and lets her sidle closer so they’re facing one another.

‘I wanted to say thank you and.. like, I’m sorry.’

Bucky’s impassive expression tightens and then he blinks, ‘you didn’t do anything wrong.’

‘No, but I.. I think I scared you. So. I’m sorry.’

He looks solemn for a long moment before he presses her to him, she fits like tetris into his neck and breathes him in like he’s the last water in a desert. It feels like she has new skin, every single nerve is sparkling, fully aware that every single _bit_ of her is separated only by thin, thin fabric from him.

He is warm, not uncomfortably so, but enough that she is acutely aware of every, single, part of her that is touching his.

When she peeks out, his expression has tightened. 

‘Should we go to hospital? Get you checked out? Just to..’

He stutters over the words and Darcy feels herself shaken for what _might_ have happened.

‘It was just my clumsiness.’

He sighs and she feels his throat gulp down and Darcy shuts her eyes, threads them into his shirt and pulls until he is as close as he could possibly be to her and yet still too far away.

‘I have liked you for a long, long time,’ he starts, running his hands carefully down her side, ‘but then.. you were into Steve and I mean.. it’s only.. fate. Steve is Steve and he’s great but.. I couldn’t stand it. I liked you first. But I was– well, a fucking idiot. I never said a damn thing. I dunno, I guess I thought you were the type to make a move or give me some kind of – we were freshman, I was kind of an asshole.’

Darcy breathes out, it’s almost a laugh, soft and surprised.

‘Since our first year?’

‘He nods, pulling back to look at her, ‘I couldn’t say four words around you – I felt like I was twelve again, learning to talk to ladies. Steve thought I just hated you – he tried not to talk about you around me but I was like.. I was like an addict. I was constantly quizzing him on your dates and shit – I think he thought I was trying to be a good friend but well, I was just being a selfish asshole.’

He grins broadly at her, ‘you were just.. different. I’d never met any poli students. You’re all crazy but damn, you were incandescent and you know, we all kind of met that year and everyone started bringing in more friends and I’d never met anyone that people gravitated towards like they do you.’

Darcy shuttered her eyes in embarrassment, ‘oh god,’ she laughed, ‘not even.’

James stared at her, intently, so pressed on her that she didn’t notice his fingers _under_ her shirt.

‘You don’t even notice,’ he whispers, ‘but no one would have even become friends if it weren’t for you. I only knew Steve from back home and he met Sam because of art therapy. Clint’s one of my best mates but we only met because of you.’

‘I thought you two met because of football-’

Bucky laughed, ‘well sure, doll but you were the one that organised had that fundraiser? That mixed game? I was on scholarship– I hadn’t even stepped outside the field for six weeks during the clinics. Clint wanted to impress Bobbi – remember, they had that thing? But she’d already met Lance at the hockey mixer and so.’

‘You mean Nat shut him down so hard he fell in love with her then and there.’

James grinned, pressing his lips against her forehead, ‘basically.’

 

 

They talk about first year and James reminds her of all the stupid, wonderful shit they got up to that year how it had just been him and Steve and then Sam and that he only saw Matt on campus this year (he blamed the fact that engineering was basically in the dungeons) but that without that mixer, he never would’ve met Clint and then her obligatory Sunday Bakes which were cake optional but BYO smokes compulsory. He told her how he’d kind of accidentally set Thor up. They’d known each other through football and he’d thought he’d get along famously with one of his friends from engineering, Sif, but that on the way to their date he’d gotten lost and ended up in the labs and met Tony.

 ‘I remember that! Didn’t Tony help him find her and they all went drinking?’

‘Yeah – I thought Sif and Thor might you know, but- uh, well, they’re like best friends so, I suppose that worked out?’

'Funny how we all kind of glued together - we threw a lot more parties back then.'

‘Your Sunday Bakes were kind of the thing of legend – we were so gung-ho about _who could come_ and who was too much of a kill-joy while high.’

‘Oh man – that one time with that media kid, Parker?’

‘Jeeeeesus, he was.. such a little shit. I still see him sometimes – in the labs with Tony – I think he’s majoring in mathematics now, but I think he’s scared of me. I yelled at him one too many times that night.’

Darcy laughs, ‘I don’t know why I stopped doing those.’

‘Mmh.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she huffs.

‘You started missing them.. to hook up with Steve.’

‘Oh,’ Darcy says, the sound popping out. Yikes.

James grins, ‘it truly broke my heart.’

Darcy rolls her eyes, ‘then you fucked the entire cheerleading team.’

‘Woah, woah, that was a terrible, ungentlemanly rumour meant to shame those girls. I didn’t sleep with any of them – not that it was anyone’s business if I did.’

‘But I don’t remember seeing you for a long time. Everyone said it was because you were trying for a hat trick.’

James winces, ‘doll, you’re killing me.’

‘What, why?’

‘You were always _here._ With Steve. I couldn’t be here.’

Darcy blinked at him. ‘You liked me.’

He grinned, his grip on her waist tightening, ‘sure, I told ya that.’

‘But like _really, really._ ’

‘Like really, really it took me three years to figure out how to ask you to be ‘casual’.

Darcy smiles and kisses the underside of his jaw. ‘That’s cute.’

‘It ain’t. It’s stupid. I could at least’ve tried. Thought we could be friends after you and Steve.. you know.. but I felt like such a goober.’

‘A goober,’ she laughs, ‘amazing.’

‘Nah, well, I mean, I dunno, Lewis. You’re kind of intense –‘

‘We even got stuck in a closet together but you really gave off the ‘I hate you’ vibe.’

Barnes groans and then laughs into her hair, ‘I was trying my best to come across cool and shit, I’d had dreams about being locked in a closet with you.’

‘What!’

‘I shit you not,’ he says, and she can see the crimson blush rising up his next and she grins to herself.

‘I was so into you – that whole semester,’ she whispers to him, ‘and then I opened the doors to get the posters back and there you were. When you said don’t close the door-’

‘Did you do that on purpose?!’

Darcy groaned, ‘I mean, I don’t think so but I think my body was just on autopilot at that point.’

‘Wait, you were into me since the beginning of this semester?’

Darcy rolled her eyes, ‘the beginning of this year,’ she flushed, ‘probably, I dunno, you wouldn’t say five words to me.’

‘I was scared they’d be _I fucking love you_ Lewis.’

Her stomach is the first to react – it flips right over and her eyes leap up to his face and before he can take it back or let her know ‘its just buddy buddy’, she’s kissing him.

 

 

The thing about having a crush is it goes one of two ways. You imagine all these different scenarios in your head – all kinds of wonderful things and then you get to know the person and they’re either so, so much better in real life or you realise you had them on a pedestal and they’re actually an asshole.

And both of those things kind of happened – but a lot of the asshole categorization had been Darcy’s loyalty to Pepper clouding all judgment but also, it’s a lot of making shit up in your head – like getting stuck in a closet (although Darcy had imagined it being his car breaking down on that roadtrip they gang had thought about taking) – and then the real thing will either be vastly superior or a huge let down.

The thing is this: Darcy has done the crush goes boyfriend thing before. She had been through all the stages – lust, crush, like, love and then heartbreak. You name it, she had been through it. The thought did cross her mind that it might be really disappointing. That maybe Barnes was a slobberer or didn’t respect boundaries or would just generally be less great than the various versions of him she had masturbated to.

Well.

Well.

Imaginary-James had nothing on his real-life counterpart.

Darcy had always imagined he’d be kind of sweet, soft, treat her as if she was made of glass. It was something she’d always kind of tried to get Steve to stop doing but, there was nothing sweet about this.

 James twisted her and somehow, with some magic superhuman strength, she was sitting tidily in his lap with her breasts right in his face.

‘That’s a genius move.’

‘I thought so.’

‘I appreciate the concern for my back.’

‘It was all about that.’

‘Mmmhmm.’ _Liar._

‘Tell me what you like,’ he says, his tone changing from light to serious.

There is something deferential in his voice that makes Darcy feel heady on power and yet completely at his mercy.

‘And if you want to stop, whenever you want to stop.’

‘Goes both ways,’ Darcy mumbles, in his throat, reveling in the vibrations of his voice against her lips.

‘I’ve been waiting to-’ and he trails off into her neck and smiles, arching up to place scorching kisses against her clavicles.

Darcy reacts completely on impulse, pressing herself against him, ‘tell me.’

‘It’s been a long time comin’,’ he groans.

‘It better be,’ Darcy teases and peels her shirt off. It twitches a bit, where the fabric has stuck to the blood but once its off, the cool air on her back feels _exquisite._ To the point of ecstasy.

His half-laugh stutters to a close and he closes his eyes, almost in prayer and Darcy feels her heart clench around the gesture. He is so much _better_ in person.

His face is sculpture – its all hard and soft lines almost as if someone chiseled him from marble. And expressive. His determination to come across impassive is belied by the most expressive eyes she’s ever seen. Dark, dark hazel and almost molten in the middle, smoldering with intensity.

It is reflexive when she presses her lips to his forehead and sighs. This is not _just_ a crush. 

Somewhere in the recesses of her mind come half-formed thoughts. The irascible desire to tear herself down, down, down. The voices are always the same, the complaints are always identical. It is the same litany of condescension she has known all her life.

_You are not good enough, or pretty enough or interesting enough. You are not skinny enough or smart enough and he will not stay for someone like you._

But then his lips are skimming the corners of her bra and he says, ‘Darce, I never thought I’d-’

He looks up at her then, anxious and vulnerable and she knows in that moment she never wants to break his heart, never wants this moment to end and then he kisses her and sinks every stupid insecurity right down to the pit of her stomach and by the time he’s expertly removed her shorts she wouldn’t even be able to tell you her own name.

 

 

 

 

 

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he growls as she pulls away.

‘If you don’t lie down right now, Barnes, I swear to god.’

And he does, ‘I’m not allowed to remove this?’ he asks, looking up at her innocently. ‘I feel we’re unequally matched. You’ve got all your underthings on.’

Darcy raises an eyebrow, ‘I hadn’t even noticed you were naked!’

He grins. ‘So…?’

‘They’re heavy,’ she mutters, grinding onto him, ‘and if I’m on top-’

His eyebrows raise in surprise and he frowns then, ‘it hurts?’

‘Back aches, neck aches – this isn’t very sexy, huh?’

He looks up at her, his jaw clenching, ‘I don’t think I have ever seen anything sexier.’

Darcy laughs if only to stop herself from ravishing him and skipping all her intended plans. There was still so much to explore, so much to discover.

Her back was making it difficult to bend, where the path or the sculpture had opened the skin, it was tight and burned a little when she stretched too far but she intended to hold this moment forever. Intended to have it seared in her mind for safe-keeping.

She lowered to kiss him, knees bent and tucked at his sides, his dick hot at her center. Every movement she made gifted her an excruciatingly soft noise of restraint from him. It was _wonder._

‘Did you lock the door,’ Darcy mutters, hotly in his hear.

‘Whatever would I need to do that for? We’re playing checkers.’

‘We should play more checkers, then.’

‘There’s a sock,’ Bucky told her, tightly, his jaw clenching as she moved her hips against him. He coughed to clear his throat, ‘Steve’ll know.’

‘Steve will know I’m about to fuck you?’

‘Darce..’ Bucky warned, ‘where exactly did you learn to torture people like this.’

‘The things you learn in polisci,’ she says and he bursts out laughing.

‘The more you know.’

She traces hot, wet kisses up his neck and then hovers her mouth over his for a second before he seizes up to drag her down to him. His hands find her hair, pulling the pony tail he’d put it in, down until he can twist her to his will.

Darcy doesn’t even flinch when the luxurious pleasure/pain arrives just moans, just a touch.

‘Yes,’ she hisses, quietly, ‘please.’

He pulls her hair back and tugs a little more until her neck is exposed to him entirely and he has her pined there.

‘Do you like it like this?’

And Christ, Darcy had never really investigated _being_ punished as a kink but goddamn, it was working for her. The vulnerability it forced felt like a cold open for intimacy and yet, they’d already kind of thrown all the cards on the table. What was one more?

‘Yes,’ she breathed, ‘yes.’

Keeping her there, his tongue found the edges of her bra and wrote a line of awful, despicable things in her cleavage.

With his other hand, he pulled down the tops of her bra, his tongue finding her nipple and swirling it around the already dark areole. She’s almost dizzy with anticipation and it stutters out of her before she’s even conscious of the need, ‘bite,’ she whimpers and when he does, she actually thinks that for a moment her entire body exits its physical form and she understands what people meditate for years to achieve.

  _Nirvana._

 Suddenly, his hands are everywhere and yet carefully, avoiding her back and she’s pretty sure she’s never been kissed like this. Bucky is _demanding._ Kissing him is like battling for air and she can feel the push and tug of their garnering for control and god, there is nothing sexier than when he groans against her mouth, anguish across his face and maybe, just _maybe_ lets her take the reins.

‘You’re killin’ me.’

‘But isn’t it fun?’

He grins up at her and places both hands in hers, linking them, stopping her ministrations for a moment. He reaches past her to his bedside drawer and opens it, peers inside and then huffs.

‘Fuck.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I.. don’t have any condoms.’

Darcy blinks.

‘Presumptuous.’

‘I’m serious,’ he says, apologetically, ‘its.. been a while.’

‘Wait,’ Darcy stares around their dorm room, Steve’s art everywhere and frowns, ‘neither of you?’

Bucky winces, ‘yep.’

‘You’ve checked.’

He gulps. ‘Yes.’

‘Jesus – have you been tested recently?’

His eyes flash at her, ‘uh.’

Darcy looks at him imploringly, ‘come on dude! Seriously!’

‘I gave my last one to Rhodey.’

‘You _gave_ him your last one?’

‘It was that night we got him to rescind the bet – he got to chatting with this girl and I didn’t want to _ruin_ the night for him.’

‘Oh my god – well I don’t have one. They’re all up in my dorm room. Natasha,’ she glares at him, ‘is always prepared.’

He snorts. ‘Like a boy scout.’

‘I don’t make a habit of starting what I can’t finish,’ Darcy says saucily, ‘this is your own fault for being a generous friend.’

James lets go of her hands, runs his hands down her sides and looks incredibly forlorn.

‘What’s a few more hours when I’ve waited this long?’

Darcy clicks her teeth, can’t help the small flutter of warm delight.

‘I’ll go – you wait for pizza man.’

‘No, no, I’ll go. I’ll be chivalrous,’ Barnes says and moves to sit up.

Darcy laughs, ‘like that, hmm?’

He lies back, huffing. ‘You’re the worst.’

‘I’m the best,’ Darcy grins and gets up, tugging on her grimey shirt, ‘I’m also gonna shower and change and then I’ll come back.’

‘Sure,’ he says, pulling on his basketball shorts, ‘I’ll be here.’

She’s buckling her sandals when he passes her her phone, ‘found this by you last night.’

‘Thanks,’ she mumbles, feeling the creeping embarrassment about last night return in full force.

‘When I saw you.. when you fell like that – I was just- and it was like, what if something happened to you? What if you were seriously hurt?’

Darcy nodded, ‘I know,’ she said softly, ‘I know and-’

‘And we’ve never even been on a proper date.’

Darcy stuttered out a laugh. ‘Asshole.’

‘See you soon, doll.’

‘Ah huh,’ she replies because she’s really starting to dig the _doll_ thing.

 

 

 

When she tries to turn the phone on as she gets out of their building, the empty battery icon appears and Darcy just rolls her eyes. Typical. She slips it into the pocket of her skirt and heads up towards her rooms.

It’s a nice night, the pavement is still warm from the day but there’s a cool, fresh breeze coming in. Fall is technically here already but seasons never quite settle in properly on the coast at MCU.

There’s people out – mid-semester exams finishing and people getting back outside to enjoy the very, very last of the hospitable weather. This used to be her favourite time of the year. She loved the end of term, used to wait for the term end Halloween parties with such relish but now it just symbolized the end. The moment the leaves switched over to amber, that would be it.

She scoffs at herself and how quickly her mood goes from incandescently happy to somber and ghoulish. She’s been here before. So, _so,_ so many times. The flare ups are always premeditated and she knows the signs so well that depression feels like coming home.

She turns up towards the football field, passing the sigma kappa house when she sees Steve. Or rather, notices Steve is coming towards her.

He smiles tightly and waves, ‘Darce!’

‘Captain,’ Darcy replies and feels an unpleasant prickle at the back of her neck. Nothing good was about to happen.

‘I’ve been looking for you for days!’

 Ah. Yes. Her reclusive one week sojourn from humanity.

‘Studying,’ she says and then shrugs, ‘turned my phone off,’ she mumbles in case he’d sent a message, ‘sorry.’

‘Sam said you had a report – how did it go?’

Report? She’d had four exams and that was it. Her confusion must show because he frowns, ‘maybe he misheard. It went well though?’

‘Oh, yeah, I think so. They weren’t worth much, really but I’ll feel better once I know what I got.’

He smiles understandingly and then sort of rocks on his heels.

‘What did you want to see me about?’ Darcy asks, preempting him. He looks so deeply uncomfortable and she knows him, _knows_ that face. That’s his ‘this is for your own good’ face.

‘Sharon.’

Darcy winces. ‘About that-‘

He cuts her off before she apologizes and waves his hand, dismissively.

‘It’s not what I think you think.’

Darcy frowns and then says, slowly, ‘okay, what do I think?

‘I haven’t been very fair to you – I wasn’t, or, I tried to do what was best after we-’

After he trails off for an uncomfortable moment, she sighs, ‘broke up?’

‘Sure, after we broke up,’ Steve says, always apologetic, ‘but then – I just kept trying to clear the air with you but you just.. I didn’t know if I would make it worse by talking to you about it.’

‘About what?’ Darcy asks, deliberately even. She doesn’t want to have this conversation. She had quite ardently avoided having this conversation and now he wants to force this conversation? Jesus.

‘I just wanted to make you understand – the whole situation.’

‘Steve,’ Darcy interrupts because this conversation is _killing_ her. She wants to be friends. She wants them to get along. She never wants to rehash what he said to Clint about her. She never wants to open herself up for inspection like she had to do when she heard what he had said about her.

They had been best friends who started sleeping together who realized that it was so much better not to be sleeping together.

‘Do we have to do this?’

‘Darcy,’ Steve replies, pained, ‘please.’

‘What more is there to say?’ she groans, ‘seriously!?’

‘I think I _need_ this,’ he implores and she slumps, crosses her arms over her chest.

‘Alright. Let’s do it. You want to say it? Wanna get it all of your chest? Be my guest.’

He winces, ‘I never meant to hurt you.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’

‘Darcy, please! I’m trying to fix this.’

‘Fix what?! It was fine – _we_ were fine until you decided you had feelings for me again. What was that about? Was I supposed to come running back to you? Fuck, Steve, what the hell!’ she yells.

‘Wait, what?’ he gapes, ‘….that’s very much not what this is about.’

‘Isn’t that what you told Bucky?’ Darcy says, feeling all the anger dissipate from her.

Steve frowns and then, ‘Darcy. I was talking about Sharon. I mean, I guess I didn’t say but I was trying to tell him it was okay.. you and him, that it was okay.’

Darcy huffs.

‘So why did you gatecrash our date?’

He looks shame-faced and then laughs a little, ‘I wanted to talk to you. You wouldn’t spend any time with me alone! I figured I could get Bucky to duck out for a bit, get some beers and come back but-’

‘Dude, literally why didn’t you just say something?’

Steve purses his lips, ‘come on, you’ve been dodging me all semester. You wouldn’t even go see Star Wars with me when everyone got food poisoning, that time.’

Darcy rolls her eyes, ‘okay, that was months ago and we’d just broken up. Excuse me if I didn’t want to spend 3 hours in the dark with you pretending I was totally fine and okay and not upset.’

He sighs, ‘look, I’m sorry.’

‘Jesus, Steve, I don’t want you to be sorry – it’s done. I want – I knew you were into Sharon and you two were being so cagey about it, I thought if I said something to her, she would see that it wasn’t _me_ that was standing in the way or whatever.’

‘You spoke to her?’ Steve asks, soft and surprised and digs his hands into his pockets.

A group of freshman pass them, laughing giddily and Darcy waits until they’re out of earshot before she rolls her shoulders, tries to buffer herself from the embarrassment she feels at getting involved, at ending up higher and higher on Sharon’s shit-list, ‘I didn’t want to interfere but Sharon kept glaring at me every time she saw me, I think she thought I was stringing you along or I dunno what she thought but I figured I could fix it.’

Darcy laughs, ‘I fucked it up – really but, _but_ you _do_ like her, huh?’

Steve’s stares at the ground, his palm rubbing the back of his neck and its _so_ clear. ‘Yah-huh.’

Darcy grins wickedly, ‘I knew it.’

It surprises her in that moment how _okay_ she is. How much she just wants the air between them to be clear again and how much she’s missed him, as a friend. She remembers the night at Tony’s apology party and seeing him inside and telling Bobby she missed him and she did and at the time it had been so hard to decipher what _way_ she missed him but its so clear now.

‘She’s been going through a lot of stuff,’ Steve says, quietly, ‘I don’t think she was glaring at you – I think that was just how she was dealing with everything at the time.’

Darcy mouth forms a small ‘o’ and she grimaces, ‘fuck, my bad.’

Steve nods, ‘I just didn’t want you to think it was personal, or about us,’ and he gestures vaguely between them, ‘or you know-’

‘Steve, I appreciate you doing this – I.. I should’ve done this months ago.’

He shrugs, ‘I get it, though.’

‘Do you think we can maybe try being friends again?’

Steve sighs, ‘does it mean I can stop letting you win Mario Kart out of courtesy?’

Darcy stutters out a laugh, ‘you little shit! Courtesy my ass.’

He grins, ‘I want you to know I think you and Buck-’ he coughs, uncomfortably.

Darcy feels her mouth twitch at the sides and she can’t help it, she smiles, ‘thanks buddy.’

‘So.. this thing with Sharon, huh?’

Steve groans, ‘its new but, I think I kept braking on it because I wanted to clear everything up between us..’

‘You and me?’ Darcy says and she remembers Sharon’s bitter words.

‘Yeah.. I tried to explain why it was important to me.. about sorting this out, clearing the air or whatever. You were one of my best friends,’ he says, ‘but she thought I meant I was still in love with you.’

Darcy doesn’t feel her heart stutter at that, in fact, she just feels like she can take a deeper, clearer breath.

‘So did Bucky.’

Steve groans, ‘What a bang up job I've been doing.’

Darcy shrugs and then frowns, ‘you know, really, it was my fault. I should’ve just talked to you.’

‘We say that now but it’s not that easy to be that honest – especially after what I said to you or about you,’ he says slowly, ‘I just want you to know that all of that.. everything you heard, or what you didn’t hear was that it’s kind of the best things about you?’

Darcy scoffs but Steve shakes his head, ‘no, I’m serious. You are passionate – knowing exactly what you want to do right now isn’t a failure, it just means you’re on a journey to find out. Just because I think I want to do art now doesn’t mean that I’m going to be doing it a decade from now or even next year. It’s just what I want right now.’

Darcy thinks about the other things he’d said – about her inability to escape her own insecurities, about the self-destructive thoughts and can’t help but think it’s all empty nothings.

‘Thanks, Steve.’

He shakes his head, ‘you really changed me, Darcy. Even as a friend – you helped me challenge what I thought I knew, what I wanted-’

‘Steve, you don’t have to do this,’ she says, trying to find a natural end to this conversation, a way away from these platitudes.

‘I know you don’t believe me when I say this – but someday, Darcy, you are going to learn to love yourself as much as we do.’

She eyes him, dubiously, ‘you think my brain is wired that way?’

‘I think your brain makes you the stubbornest, most animated, opinionated and _kind_ person I know – you’ll figure it out.’

Darcy laughs, self-deprecatingly and then pulls him into a hug.

‘You’re a smart jerk.’

He laughs and then pulls back, ‘sometimes.’

 

 

 

 

The dorm is packed and lively when she arrives. Someone is blasting Adele and the common room smells of nail polish and acetate.

‘Darcy!?’ America yells, ‘girl, where the fuck have you been?’

She sinks onto the floor next to her and Kate and shrugs, ‘been one of those weeks.’

‘So, you’ve just been avoiding everyone?’ America snaps.

Darcy pulls a face, apologetic, ‘I didn’t mean to disappear. I mostly just slept.’

Understanding dawns on America’s face and then Kate places the nail-polish down, screwing the lid back on with consternation.

‘Are you and Steve… back together?’ Kate asks, hesitantly, her eyes glued to the label on the lid, ‘because it’s okay if you are. Sharon will come around.’

Darcy glances at both of them, ‘oh god, no! It wasn’t about that at all, it was-’

America sighs, ‘Lewis, after all the years we’ve known you, don’t you think that it’s okay to tell us when you’re not okay?’

Darcy catches her lower lip in between her teeth and nods. She feels it again – like her throat opens up just a little. She drags herself to her feet and presses a kiss to America’s cheek.

‘You know I love you right?’

America grins, ‘damn straight.’

 

 

 

 

 

When her phone finally turns back on after a few minutes charging, she lies back on her bed and rings James, twisting her fingers through the cable.

‘I thought you’d ghosted me,’ he says, sounding sleepy when he picks up.

Darcy laughs softly, ‘Steve found me.’

‘Oh.’ James’ voice crackles and she thinks she can hear him sit up, the bed creaking, ‘And?’ he asks and she wonders if she will ever be better at soothing the trepidation in his voice.

‘He’s into Sharon – he just wanted to clear the air. Get back to being friends.’

He sighs in relief and Darcy’s eyes shutter closed, feeling relieved and guilty all at once.

‘He must’ve gone there, after,’ Bucky says quietly, ‘he didn’t come back here.’

‘I hope she forgives him,’ Darcy yawns, ‘they’d be really good together.’

Bucky mumbles in agreement and then says, ‘do you wanna shower and sleep and we hang out tomorrow?’

Her bones melt into the comforter and she nods before vocalising, ‘I would like that a lot.’

‘Thanks, by the way. For calling. S’nice to fall asleep hearing you.’

Darcy hums in reply, feeling warmth spread right down to her core, the easy understanding, ‘goodnight, you.’

‘Goodnight, doll.’

 

 

 

 The bone weariness is there when she wakes but her phone, fully charged, kicks back in with her Tuesday morning alarm and she peels herself out of bed, doesn’t indulge the bone-deep tiredness she feels. She knows it’s there. She knows it will only manifest if she continues to sink into it like it’s a deep, dark sea. But she is also tired of being tired and tired of living in _wait_ for the next relapse.

It is easier, somehow, to ride the wave of motivation straight out of bed, into a shower. To move with a purpose, to ignore momentarily the pull of dark thoughts and to just _get on with it._ She texts the girls, pulls on jeans and just tries to get well away from her dorm, from her bedroom, from the cloying voices in her head that tell her this momentary normality will go, soon.

As much as she can ignore the guilt of missing a week of classes, it’s a lot more difficult to summon up courage to see all her friends. She still hasn’t called Jane back, hasn’t replied to Tony’s end of year party invite, hasn’t started an essay due tomorrow morning, doesn’t know how Pepper’s campaign is going or what, if anything, has happened to Kamala. But she’s going to try. She’s going to be better. She’s going to _try_ to be better.

She’s picking up coffee and croissants when she gets the replies to the affirmative. By the time she gets there, Pepper is already sat at the table and Nat nudges her, taking the three coffees, perched on top of the takeaway tray for her.

‘Hey, Darce, I just - I didn’t want to-’ Nat starts, looking deeply uncomfortable, ‘- push. I didn’t – but, you know you can talk to me? If it helps.’

Darcy feels a hollowness dissipate and nods, apologetic, ‘yeah. At the time – I dunno, afterwards that all seems logical and stuff but..’

Nat nods, ‘I just want you to know. Everyone was worried – it’s never the same without you around.’

Darcy laughs, half in disbelief that anyone is still friends with her with her chronic disability to be reliable.

Nat looks at her seriously, stops her a few steps away from the table where America and Kamala have arrived.

‘If you ever, _ever_ want to talk about it. Or not talk about it – but together. That goes for next year and forever,’ she says and then slips into the seat and matches the coffees to their owners.

‘Bobbi coming?’ Pepper says, eyeing the two spare cups.

‘Kate, too,’ she adds and everyone’s eyes slide over to Natasha who rolls her eyes.

‘Kate and I are friends now. Honestly. As if _I_ would be that petty.’

America snorts, ‘oh you? _Never._ ’

Nat grins and raises her cup in salute, ‘it’s just _un_ ladylike. I much prefer outright aggression.’

Kamala sips the tea and Darcy opens the bag of croissants, ‘while she’s not here, what are we going to get Bobbi for her birthday?’

‘Spa voucher?’ Pepper says.

‘She’s at a chiropractor every second day,’ America laughs, ‘isn’t it kinda the same?’

‘Her chiro is hella cute though,’ Kamala adds, smiling mischievously.

‘If only Bobbi was interested-’

‘Wait, her and Lance?’ Darcy starts.

‘Back on,’ Natasha says, smiling like a leper.

‘I fucking knew it,’ Darcy groans, ‘those two are worse than you and Clint.’

America bursts into laughter as Pepper just takes a sip of coffee, ‘things have improved though. Now you two fuck each other to show affection rather than just drooling silently.’

Nat rolls her eyes, ‘as if we ever.’

‘Oh my god, what about New Years?’

‘We got together on New Years!’

‘Exactly,’ Darcy and Kam say in unison and then burst out into laughter.

It’s with perfect grace that Bobbi sits down next to Pepper, takes her coffee and straightens her cheer uniform.

‘Who are we making fun of?’

As Nat clarifies her and Clint’s method of flirting, Darcy glances over at Kam. She looks.. the same. It doesn’t stop the pang of guilty, guilty apology that makes her sit up a little straighter. Kam glances over at her and tilts her head with a small smile.

‘What?’ she mouths.

Darcy just shrugs, ‘how’s the thesis proposal going?’

Kamala beams, ‘approved! And I got the coordinator I wanted – she basically said I could write about whatever I wanted.’

‘You still going to do it about India and Pakistan?’ Bobbi asks.

Kamala grins, her teeth sharp and brilliantly white, ‘no, I’m writing it on burgeoning alt-right movements on campus.’

‘You’re doing your thesis on HYDRA?’ Darcy says, her eyes widening.

Pepper cuts in, ‘wait, I thought you were doing it on-’

‘I was,’ Kam says and Darcy thinks that she looks so much fiercer in this light, ‘but I didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to write about this. To write my side.’

‘MCU’s paper wants an op ed about it – they’ve overheard,’ America says, every bit the smug girlfriend. Kam smiles at her and then kisses the side of her mouth, sweetly.

‘From you?’

‘Yep,' Kam says, 'and Tony couldn’t get the site down but it just redirects to the Malala Foundation.’

‘That’s probably the sincerest form of apology you can get from him,’ Pepper says, smiling sweetly.

‘I’m going to miss you guys,’ Darcy mumbles, ‘I’m gonna miss this.’

She sees Pepper frown and glance at Nat as Kate swings up onto the table.

‘Whatever makes you think that this has to end, Lewis?’

 

 

 

 

 

The afternoon brings an almost finished essay when someone knocks on her door.  She pulls herself out of bed, from under the covers, dumps her laptop on her pillow and is halfway to the door when Tony and Bruce step inside.

‘Lewis.’

‘Do you guys understand how knocking is supposed to work,’ she mutters.

‘It was unlocked,’ Tony says, unapologetically.

‘Nat told us you were clothed and working,’ Bruce explains, nudging Tony.

‘Right, yes. So, is that done?’

‘My essay?’

‘Yes, Darcy.’

‘Almost, it just needs-’

‘Good enough. You need to come with us.’

Darcy glances from Tony’s slightly over-confident smile to Bruce’s uneasy grimace and takes a step back.

‘Uh, I’m gonna need more information than that.’

‘Right,’ Tony starts and then looks to Bruce.

‘Uh.’

‘Guys,’ Darcy intones.

‘Well.’

‘Spit it out!’

‘Thor and Jane.’

‘What about Thor and Jane?

‘Well.. they’re fighting.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeeeeek, one chapter left. 
> 
> My excitement to have the completed version up for you guys is REAL.


	7. he didn't say anything about a seance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang does Bobbi's 21st birthday and graduates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is very long but now this story can go to bed and rest.

 It’s all very bizarre to be sitting in the centre of what is, unarguably, a séance.

‘I think we should all take a moment, to consider, the consequences,’ Natasha says to their little assembled cohort, lit in a flickering light that makes the sharp angles of her face look deadly.

‘You scared of an itty bitty ghosty?’

Darcy stares at Clint who continually surprises her with how little notice his mouth gives his brain of output and how clearly it disregards obvious threats in his immediate vicinity.

Bobbi rolls her eyes, ‘fairly sure the least of your worries are the _spirits_ that might come to wreck havoc on your life.’

‘But guys, we’re summoning ghosts,’ he whines, displeased they’re ruining his fun.

‘No, this was going to be an intervention and then _you_ pulled out a Ouija board,’ Kate reminds him, from where she’s seated next to Bobbi.

Clint groans, ‘well we weren’t getting anywhere, were we?’

‘If you shut up for like 2.5 seconds-’ Bobbi mutters.

‘Will I piss off the ghost?’

‘Did you eat more or less sugar than normal,’ Nat says.

‘I did have a-’ Clint gets cut off.

‘Guys,-’

‘You’re awful chatty-’

‘Hey, look!’ Kate chirps, pointing behind Darcy. Darcy turns briefly before her hand gets pulled roughly to the other side of the board and she clicks her teeth at Clint.

‘I can’t decide if its pulling me towards the left or right.’

‘That’s because this is _all_ elaborately marketed bullshit,’ Bobbi says, dryly.

‘Pretty sure that means left,’ he snickers, ‘J? A? N?’

‘Isnt that a W?’

‘J, W makes even less sense than J, A.’

‘Because this is all real,’ Darcy drawls.

‘Guys!’

‘Don’t get your knickers-’ he says at Nat’s yell.

‘Jane!’

Clint claps happily. ‘This shit works!’

Bobbi slaps his hand away from hers as he gestures impressed at the board. ‘You’re a lunatic.’

‘Did Tony come get you?’ Kate interrupts, scooching over for her to sit.

Jane nods. ‘He didn’t say anything about a séance.’

‘Just setting a mood,’ Clint says happily.

‘You and Thor are ‘hububbing,’ Darcy pulls Jane down next to her, ‘and it’s because of me?’

‘You?’ Jane says and looks back at the circle.

‘Well sort of,’ Kate says, shrugging. ‘We didn’t tell her the _whole_ truth.’

Darcy’s eyes snap to Nat who looks impassively back at her and then to Jane who looks guilty. Darcy knows a pressure point when she sees one.

‘So when you said intervention,’ she says, scowling at Kate, ‘you meant mine.’

Kate, unrepentant, says, ‘what would we possibly have to criticize Jane for? She has a double doctorate and a boyfriend that looks like a Calvin Klein model.’

Jane blushes beside her and looks at Darcy sadly, ‘my bad.’

‘Did you and Thor even have an argument about me?’

Jane frowns, ‘yes- but,’ at Darcy’s gasp she holds up a hand and looks consolatory, ‘it wasn’t what you’re thinking.’

‘What was I thinking?” Darcy asks sarcastically.

‘Thor wanted to speak to the counsellor about you and I.. thought that should be your decision.’

It is understandable, if you’ve never been in a situation where your entire group of friends (sans the ones that were either not brave enough or knew better than to attend) look at you with the piteous frown-y faces of an adult letting a child know they will not be getting the toy they want for Christmas how to react. But when they do, when every single one of the five pairs of eyes currently trained on her, stares her down with the obvious ‘you need help’ face it feels much like being attacked. Hostile situations call for one of two responses: fight or flight.

Darcy considered the former for a second – she knew logicially that all the angry barbs she wanted to yell at them were dampened by the fact that her throat was gulping down all the angry, bitter embarrassment at her friends staging an _intervention_ because she was a nutcase and while she was normally always raging for a verbal spar, her legs did what her throat could not and sent her flailing towards the door, tripping over Jane’s bag in the dim light of the fucking séance and out of Tony’s dorm room faster than even Nat could get up and come chase her down.

  

She does two things as she runs up the hill away from Tony’s dorm: she turns off her location services and then calls Sam.

 

Considering she called to tell him she’d stop by, he looks more surprised than he ought to.

As the betrayal had extended to not just her best friends but the extended circle, Darcy had to wonder if Sam had been involved – or knew and just hadn’t had the political pull to stamp out the stupid plot before it got off the ground. Except.. it wasn’t like Sam. It was also the opposite of helpful and surely, _surely_ they covered those kinds of things in ‘How to Psychology 101’.

‘All this time without a house call. Finally!’ he grins and steps aside to let her in. His housemate, Lance, gives her a cheeky wink and tells Sam that he definitely _won’t_ be home for dinner. She forgets to berate him about his choice in women before he’s slipped past her and down the stairs.

 ‘C’mon in. Soda?’

‘Sure,’ she says and slips down onto the couch.

‘Do you guys ever clean this thing?’

‘Let me know if you find a phone. I lost one down there.’

‘Your dignity too. You and Lance are disgusting.’

‘We like to ensure authenticity to the campus lifestyle.’

‘Is that what this is?’ Darcy asks, laughing. ‘I’ve been doing it all wrong.’

‘It’s not just energy drinks and overdue essays,’ Sam tells her in mock horror.

‘It’s too late to do anything about it now,’ she says, sadly, ‘it’s almost over.’

‘The real world’s mostly energy drinks and overdue assignments anyway. You can start anytime.’

She grins and takes the proffered soda from him as he takes a seat beside her on the couch.

‘So, house visit. What happened?’

Darcy clicks open the can, ‘that’s annoying that you do that.’

‘Make educated guesses?’

‘No.. yes. Yes. It’s annoying.’

‘Really? I thought it’d be comforting. Kind of cuts the crap.’

‘Some people enjoy the soft buffering of crap.’

‘You’re deflecting.’

‘Sure am, Einstein.’

He chinks their cans together and tilts his head to one side, waiting.

‘You weren’t party to any ‘Darcy-intervention’ plan were you?’

‘Did they try to get you to join the gym again?’

Darcy rolls her eyes, ‘no one would be that stupid. No. So you didn’t know?’

Sam frowns, a little concerned, ‘what was the intervention about?’

‘Me,’ she says and when he lifts an eyebrow in confusion, she elaborates. ‘More specifically, my brain.’

The surprise on his brows shows no guilt and Darcy can’t help but sigh a little. Relief.

‘It was a bit of an ambush,’ she explains, ‘or a lot of an ambush. There was quite a set up.’

‘That’s not ideal,’ Sam says, quietly.

‘You don’t say.’

‘I’m disappointed they-’ he stops and then rolls his eyes, ‘no, actually, I’m not surprised.’

‘It’s bullshit,’ she says, archly. ‘I’m a functioning adult. I can look after my own shit.’

Sam frowns at her, ‘Darcy.. while their methods might not have an ounce of credibility.. it’s not like everyone hasn’t noticed you have been.. dislocated.’

Considering she had been prepared to yell at him moments before, his lack of participation in her humiliation had left her unreasonably jittery.

‘I’ve been dislocated?’ she spits and gapes at him, ‘me?! Me, who organizes _every single_ get together. Who texts all you idiots so that we can actually see each other? Me, who is literally the only one that _cares?_ I’m dislocated? What the fuck? That’s such a cop out.’

‘The cop out,’ Sam says, remaining frustratingly quiet, ‘is that you are not looking after yourself.’

‘Not looking after myself?’ Darcy spits. ‘I am literally _trying_. What the fuck do you _think_ I’m doing?’

‘Sleeping the depression away is not _fixing_ the problem.’

‘Oh fuck, come on Sam. Surely they covered this – it’s not like I can go take a fucking walk and fix my fucking brain.’

‘That’s not what I said-‘

‘No, because it is. Because none of you _actually_ get it. Because a fucking _intervention_ was a plausible method of _fixing_ me as if a little dash of compassion and a pinch of counselling can fix the chemical imbalance in my fucking brain. But gosh, thank you all for your educated and well-intentioned opinions. If only I fixed my _mindset_ I’d be fine and fucking dandy.’

‘We – them and me, we are all here, all trying to help you.’

‘Oh _please._ I do not think my mental health is anything but an interesting dramatic event. None of you are even going to remember I existed after we all graduate.’

Sam looks at her aghast, ‘that’s bullshit!’

Darcy rolls her eyes, ‘no, Sam, I think, for once, if you just pulled your head out of your arrogant-’

‘No one’s going to leave you!’ he yells and then looks angrier, as if the effort to scream was more than he bargained for.

‘I don’t-’

He cuts her off with such a disdainful look that she falters and spits, ‘right, yeah, because your three year psychology degree makes you a fucking _master_ at other people. Any idea when you were doing to tell Carol that--?’

His entire face looks set to implode, his cheeks a ruddy brown.

‘Once you go there, you don’t go back. So fuck you, ok? Fuck you. You don’t know everything. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m trying to _help_ there’s no need to stick a knife in it.’

Darcy just glares at him, ‘I’ve had enough. I’ve had _enough._ Stop telling me you all know better or whatever the fuck. As if anyone knows how I feel. Fuck.’

‘We literally all gave you space or the option to talk to us but you’re set on being the _victim,’_ he says, angrily.

He spits it out and she _feels_ the anger like actual pain under her skin, feels the burning resentment at her _self_ and her _brain_ and every single day this past semester that she’s buried under a fortress of her own anxieties. But it’s not enough in this moment to beg humility and save face because it is too much _angry._ It is everywhere. At herself for the misunderstanding with Steve, the late assessments, how many friends she’s let down. It all sticks, heavy like glue to her and she’s _furious_ and when it comes out, it is ugly and accusatory and she can’t even stop herself.

‘Oh yeah? And spending three years pining after Danvers and then moaning every time she got into a relationship, that’s not playing the victim?’

Sam flushes and she feels the icy blast of air conditioned air move past all the parts of her that are sheened in sweat, embarrassment leaking into all the pockets of air that were once brimming with her anger.

 ‘That’s real nice,’ he says, quietly and then points to the door. ‘If you’re so smart, you know the way.’

  

Any progress made in that week dissipates by the time she drags herself back to her dorm room. Without any deadlines in the immediate twenty-four hour period, Darcy crawls into bed but there is no immediate pull toward sleep. Her mind stubbornly refuses to settle, preferring to relive the moment Sam looked at her, horror and surprise and disgust and disappointment all over his face, glancing back just once to shake his head and then go to his bedroom. And then she watches the film in slow motion, backwards and forwards. It is painful, the moment just as he turns back to look at her, surprised that she would stoop that low makes her bones ache, her spine twitch angrily and her brow crinkle tightly.  

 

It is afternoon and she does not know the day of the week but she is still _relatively_ sure that it is a weekday when someone knocks. It takes a while to get out of bed, a little longer to open the blinds and realise that there is indeed someone knocking, and not just _barging_ in.

Barnes grimaces at her, his lips curling over the rim of two coffees and a dozen doughnuts.

‘You take a real long time to go get a rubber, you know that?

She huffs and pushes open the door to let him in. She watches him hesitate for all of half a moment, before he bounces on his feels and moves inside.

‘I didn’t know,’ he starts, quietly, setting down his offerings on the desk and giving her a small shrug, ‘Sucks, doll, I’m sorry they sprung you like that.’

She perches on the desk and eyes Nat’s unslept bed. ‘Yeah, I –uh, I took it the _wrong_ way.’

‘I think running outta there was probably what I would’ve done.’

‘I really haven’t been making the smartest-’

‘Hey,’ he starts quietly and pushes the warm Styrofoam into her palm, ‘still don’t think it was an ideal form of therapy.’

Darcy shrugs, taking a sip, ‘ooh, who told you?’ she mumbles, gesturing to the cup.

‘Steve,’ Bucky winces, ‘information in exchange for information.’

‘He wanted to know how I was,’ she says with a half smile.

‘Somethin’ like that.’

Darcy nods, ‘how’d you manage to keep everyone away?’

‘Cap had a word with them last night.’

Darcy traces her finger around the rim of the cup, ‘oh.’

‘Everyone is embarrassed.’

‘Kate is capable of embarrassment?’

Barnes grins at her, ‘somethin’ like it.’

‘I feel so stupid,’ she says, quietly and then sighs, ‘they were trying to help but it just felt like such a… _betrayal_.’

He nods and the silence is warm and she continues, ‘I feel like I’m running from it, but it’s always there.’

‘The.. _this_.. dep..’

‘Whatever you want to call it,’ Darcy finishes for him, ‘yes.’

‘So. It’s there. It’s not helping you and.. I’m gonna go ahead and say this and I want you to know I’m not trying to hurt you but you’re also not helping you.’

She sucks in a breath, watches the purple light from the sunset come through. Her bed has a shadow of sweat and dirt from her. The room is stale. A soft _ping_ comes through the door from someone’s text conversation in the corridor.

‘It’s your call, Darcy.’

 

Bucky slumps on Nat’s bed after he coaxes her into the shower. She takes the time to run her fingers through her hair, massages the conditioner into the ends and tries to focus on that. The methodology. The ritual. She’s done this a hundred, a thousand times before and yet her hands feel like it is all anew, like they themselves feel like a new part of her. There and not there. Slightly a part from her body. As if they are from someone else, as if she is not a part of herself. As if the parts of her are just borrowed, occasionally and not even then, does she feel whole.

The whole sensation of _feeling_ is overwhelming and she lets the water dull it all. Quietly, slowly it all dissipates and she’s left with the numbness again.

 

‘We should go, right,’ Darcy says, sitting in her underwear, feet hanging off the bed with her head in Bucky’s lap.

‘Wet hair sure but clothing optional wasn’t on the e-vite.’

‘Who says _e-vite’_ Darcy says looking up at him, ‘it was a facebook event and I don’t think Bobbi cares about what we wear as long as there’s a bar tab.’

He chuckles and then gently pushes her into a seating position.

‘Let’s go.’

 

 

The thing about birthdays is that they are almost inevitably better for everyone except the person for whom the party is dedicated. At least where her group of friends was concerned. There was Clints’ 21st where he broke his arm after a keg exploded, Thor’s 30th where they’d all forgotten he was very allergic to crab and then there was the absolute travesty of a joint 20th when Wanda almost got expelled for Tony blowing up the chemistry lab. The injustice nor the inexplicability of the faculty blaming _Wanda_ of all people made no sense. But then neither did holding a 20th inside the labs. Or anything Tony did for that matter.

 But this? This seemed to be, at the very least Lance’s mission, to ensure that none of the usual crap happened. By the looks on Tony and Clint’s faces, it seemed he had made this point _very_ clear. Their favourite pizza joint slash bar after 10 had set up a long banquet table for them.

‘It’s hardly a party if we can’t have fun.’

‘Why does your fun always include explosions or alcohol poisoning,’ Darcy muttered to Clint.

He pouted. ‘What, no explosions too?’ he nudged Nat, ‘what else do I _have?’_

‘Conversation,’ Pepper intoned, ‘Celebration? Enjoyment? Dancing?’

‘Is any of that computing,’ Nat smirked.

‘I have no idea how any of those are possible without copious amounts of alcohol and _or_ explosions.’

To her other side, Thor and Jane were sitting across the table looking contrite and trying in futility to get out of a conversation with Wanda about particle physics. When she caught Jane’s eye she smiled and mouthed, ‘later?’

‘She’s coming!?’ Kate hissed from the head of the table and flapped emphatically for them to all shut up as Kamala and America appeared with a very _unsurprised_ Bobbi between them.

‘ _Surprise!’_

‘I knew the moment these two-‘ she prodded Kam and America in the cheeks, ‘wanted to go shopping that something was up.’

Kam rolled her eyes, ‘we only said that after you said _no_ to our other billion suggestions.’

Bobbi rolled here eyes and eyed them all. ‘Y’all forgot to turn location services off. I just enjoyed torturing you too while you tried to find ways of making me come.’

America, seemingly chuffed with how sneaky she’d been, laughed. ‘Well then. Welcome to your surprise party.’

 

 

Lance and Bobbi slipped away after mains and with only a few pieces of pizza left, congealed cheese and wine rings all over the table, everyone had found booths around the bar.

 Nat and Clint had cornered her when Bucky went to chat to Cap, turning up late after his date with Sharon.

‘We don’t have to have this conversation,’ Nat said, ‘but we do have to say this: we’re both sorry.’

‘Very. Ouija boards are _bullshit._ ’

Darcy grinned at Clint and the effort of smiling didn’t seem grating, ‘yeah, they definitely are.’

‘You know what we meant though,’ he mumbled, ‘the intention behind it?’

Darcy nodded.

‘Don’t do it again.. with anyone. It’s-‘

‘Stupid,’ Nat said, ‘really fucking stupid.’

‘But, I got the message,’ Darcy offers, even if she feels like it’s too big a commiseration for them. They seem to take the effort at face value and Nat squeezes her shoulder as she brushes past her and she's almost certain she looks about to cry.

 

 

 She finds Pepper sitting outside on the stairs, Tony bouncing on his heels, two champagne glasses at their feet.

‘Hey,’ Pepper smiles and shuffles over, ‘I heard.’

Darcy doesn’t know what she’s heard but assumes _everything_ because its Pepper and that’s just how the cookie crumbles.

‘What a year,’ she replies with a shrug and they both laugh.

‘That’s for sure.’

‘Is it time for cake yet?’ Tony asks, downing his glass.

Darcy grins as they both get to their feet. ‘Did we get her the candles that sing Happy Birthday?’

‘If you mean Toxic by Britney, then _yes.'_

 'Doesn't she hate that song?' someone asks from behind Tony.

'Sam! What is the point of coming to a surprise party after the guest of honour rocks up?'

'Solidarity?' he says and grins, 'what, am I not welcome?'

'No,' Darcy interjects, quickly. 'Most welcome.'

He looks almost as if he's going to go with frowning before he rolls his shoulders back and she  _knows_ the effort he is instilling into being the bigger person here, gives him a small, hopeful smile. 

'Thanks, Darcy.'

'No,' she says, passing him a half-full champagne glass, 'I should be thanking you.'

 

 

Term ends the way it started, not with a bang but with a lot of assignments and a lot of coffee.

Deadlines get missed, she forgets to text back and things mostly fall back right where they were. But admist all of that there are some new things. Things with Bucky are good, in that new relationship kind of way, where getting to know each other _properly,_ intimately is exciting and breath-taking and beautiful.

Tony, in both surprise and confusion, is class valedictorian, beating Pepper only in the narrowest of margins and when they take the stands on the hottest day in June, she isn’t sure why she’s crying when he wishes them the brightest future, the most beautiful tomorrow. 

When they all meet at Tony’s apartment for drinks, Darcy ducks out on the balcony to text her therapist, _Tuesday? 1pm? Perfect_. The mental effort of typing out the message is less each time but makes her feel a little numb.

The end of grad night finds them all around the table, three rounds of Kings Cup behind them, empty bottles rounded up on the kitchen table and Bucky yelling at Clint for losing at the side-game of beer pong they’ve got going, _again._

She can’t quite put her finger on it, whatever the feeling is, whether nausea from too much jaeger or a nervous excitement but its there and it’s the first thing she’s _felt_ in a long time. Felt in _herself_ as if it was a part of her and not being experiencing through a lens.

And though she is sure that whatever happens tomorrow will happen, she can’t help but feel that she’ll be better for it. Good or bad, happy or sad, she would live through it. Maybe, hopefully, some of them would be there to see her through it.

And perhaps it wouldn’t be forever. Perhaps there wouldn’t be Tuesday Taco Nights in the common room with the girls and perhaps she’d see Clint only on birthdays or America only when Kamala was available but it would be ok. Maybe this moment had to pass, this glorious exquisite moment when they were all together because she would cherish it. Maybe it would be repeated, somewhere down the line, differently, perhaps, but again. Or, the dynamics would change.

But for now, they were here and for now, so was she and that, this moment, this _being_ was a forever she could remember.


End file.
